Unleashing Leaders

An inspirational guide to unleashing and focusing the leadership potential in every employee
According to a 1999 survey of more than 2,100 companies in twenty-three countries, leadership development is among the top three concerns of companies, world-wide. In this inspirational follow-up to her critically acclaimed In Search of Leaders, Hilarie Owen provides CEOs, senior managers, and HR directors with proven strategies for recognizing and overcoming their companies' inherent obstacles to leadership development. She also arms them with a complete action plan for focusing the creative energy unleashed in the process and applying it to solve a host of critical organizational problems. In a fascinating historical overview, Owen traces the evolution of leadership, from the ancient Egyptians to the modern business organization. She assesses current organizational structure and practices in terms of how conducive they are (or, more often, aren't) to leadership development.
Hilarie Owen (Gloucester, UK) works for the Institute of Leadership.Unsere heutige Unternehmenskultur wirkt sich nicht gerade förderlich auf die Entwicklung von Führungsqualitäten aus. Die meisten großen Unternehmen bilden ihre Führungskräfte entweder über interne Programme oder in externen Kursen aus - eine Methode, die wenig erfolgversprechend ist.
Aufbauend auf den Vorgängertitel "In Seach of Leaders" untersucht die Autorin in "Unleashing Leaders" die Problematik bei der Entwicklung von Führungsqualitäten in der modernen Geschäftswelt. Auf der Basis einer breiten Palette historischer und gesellschaftlicher Beispiele zeigt Owen, dass guter Führungstil das Ergebnis einer persönlichen Weiterentwicklung ist, die nicht mit Hilfe von Trainingskursen bewältigt werden kann. Denn durch Konzentration auf starre, unflexible Verfahren behindern Unternehmen die Weiterentwicklung talentierter Mitarbeiter mehr, als sie sie fördern. Preface.

Acknowledgements.

Introduction: Are We Ready for Unleashing Leaders?

How We Develop Leaders Today: Are We Doing it Right?

The Problems of Organizational Life Today: Transformation and Leadership are the Challenges for Everyone.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: What We are Seeing in Organizations Today is Not Leadership.

The Time Traveller: The Lessons for Organizations from Ancient Times.

Shaping Modern Organizations: Why Do We Build Hierarchical Structures Ruled by Managers?

The Paradigm for Change: A Universal Framework for Leaders in the Twenty-First Century.

Building a New Model for Organizations: To Unleash Leaders We Make the Old Model Obsolete.

Unleashing Leaders: Transforming Individuals and Organizations Together.

Conclusion: From Homo Sapiens to Homo Proteus (Shape Changer Being).

References.

Index. "This is a book that I will certainly recommend to people who are looking for a general understanding of what leadership is about and how it is the ingredient in modern-day thinking." (People Management, 3rd May 200)
"full of thought provoking sound advice." (Long Range Planning, No.34 2001) "In diesem Buch stellt Hilarie Owen das Führungsprinzip auf den Kopf... eine wahrhaft aufschlussreiche und inspirierende Lektüre." EUROBUSINESS HILARIE OWEN'S career began in the field of marketing with IBM and another blue chip company. She spent a year with the Government's Department of Trade and Industry launching The Enterprise Initiative. Broadening her career to management consultancy, she eventually took the plunge to set up her own consultancy at the beginning of 1991 working with organizations in the private and public sectors.

Following the success of her book Creating Top Flight Teams, she has worked worldwide developing first class teams. Hilaries has spoken at conferences around the world, lectured at Cranfield Business School and advised the Department of Education and Employment. In her last book In Search of Leaders, Hilarie Owen turned the concept of leadership on its head. She demonstrated how leaders are not just those at the top of an organization. There is leadership potential in everyone and Hilarie demonstrated that, by following her own three stage model, any individual's potential could be released.
The difficulty is that, once an individual has discovered their own leadership skills within their own sphere of ambition, it is often very difficult to use those skills within a workplace environment. This is largely because organizations, too, need to change to accomodate the leadership skills of their employees.
In much the same way that Hilarie took readers of In Search of Leaders on a journey back in time, as a means of cementing our place in society today and tomorrow, this new book takes a similar route. Hilarie draws on the history of the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, right through to the Monarchies and the rise of the Modern State, to create a view of how organizations have evolved to their current state. She illustrates the issues facing them now, and the possible reasons for the problems they are now facing.
This book allows managers to rethink the shape of their organizations in a fresh and innovative way. The current environment and management in organizations is not conducive to leadership development. Most large organizations in the world try to develop leaders through training, be it in-house programmes or external courses.
In this new book, Hilarie Owen shows us that the sort of training available is not necessarily working. Leadership is a personal journey as demonstrated in the 'prequel' to this book In Search of Leaders, and training courses alone are limited in their effectiveness, especially when individuals have to return to organizations where the structure, culture and rigid processes do not allow them to 'be leaders'.
This book offers a way forward where organizations will be able to transform themselves to become places where the potential of existing leaders and 'would-be' leaders can be expressed.
Hilarie Owen outlines a holistic model, containing seven interconnecting actions that will help organizations transform to be adaptable to leaders.
The outcome, if an organization follows this model, is a unique 'web structure' as opposed to the traditional hierarchies or organizations. The web structure in an organization promotes productivity and the release of an individual's potential.
In a climate where staff retention and motivation is a problem, managers stand to learn some important lessons from this book.
"Leadership is the right of those at the top of the organization - but we are all at the top of something in our life. We all have the potential to postively effect things, but such leadership requires personal courage. Unleashing Leaders will be compelling reading for you, if you have that courage." Anthony J Stables, Air Vice Marshall