April 26 2023 at 06:00AM
The review - LEADERSHIP ON THE LINE
LEADERSHIP ON THE LINE
Staying alive through the dangers of change.
Ronald Heifetz & Marty Linsky
Welcome to The Review. The section in this newsletter where we want to share some of the readings that we found inspiring and helpful for Project Managers.
Through the reviewed books, we aim to provide some ideas that may help you to better run projects or offer a different approach to frequent topics on project management. However, this space is not intended as a monologue but to spark discussion. We would love to hear from you about the proposed readings or your recommendation for these essential books that every project manager should know. We are curious about your feedback!
In this first release, we have chosen an ever-hot topic: Leadership. The title is Leadership on the Line. First published in 2002 and re-edited in 2017. Leadership of the Line distinguishes two types of challenges: Technical challenges, which can be solved with the current know-how, and Adaptative challenges, which require learning new ways of working, thinking, or acting to overcome them.
The text focuses on how to deal with Adaptative challenges, exposing the principles of Adaptative Leadership and describing some techniques to, for example, orchestrate the conflict.
In opposition to an authoritative leader, decisive in action and with a clear vision of the way forward, Heifetz and Linsky propose a challenging leadership style, with more questions than answers and willing to give the work, and the word, back to the people, but supporting them to find a solution.
There is an explicit warning about the risks in taking this approach, how leaders disturbing the status quo and surfacing conflicts usually get burned or, at a minimum, are discredited for not offering easy answers. The authors provide some keys to exercise adaptative Leadership without getting "taken out."
Leadership on the Line sets up some of the cornerstones in modern Leadership. The book is easy to read and well-crafted, with vivid examples, some of which come from the writers' first-hand experience.
It is worth not only reading it but keeping re-visiting it from time to time because the exposed matters seem to be timeless.
Please enjoy it!
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LEADERSHIP ON THE LINE ISBN-10 1633692833 ISBN-13 978-1633692831 288 pgs
Ronal Heifetz is a senior lecturer in public Leadership at the University King Hussein bin al Talal of Jordania. He founded the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He has been a reference for the last three decades and co-developed the framework for adaptative Leadership. Marty Linsky is a Harvard professor at Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He co-developed with Ronald Heifetz the Adaptative leadership framework. Linsky has a career in politics, and he served as a Chief Counselor of Massachusetts Governor between1992 and 1995 |
