Leaders Who Transform Society:: What Drives Them and Why We are Attracted

From the Publisher

"Popper examines the leadership practices of everyone from Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Charles Manson and Jim Jones to determine how they developed relationships with those they led, including the regressive, or those in which all parties are mutually dependent, the symbolic, and those which are transformational and developmental and foster positive moral and emotional growth. He defines leadership as an expression of the circumstances and as a subjective creation of the followers, analyzes the main perspectives on leadership as a relationship, examines how transformational leadership applies in everyday life, and describes the development of transformational leaders in terms of motivation, ability, and developmental processes."

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Reference & Research Book News

"[T]he present title looks at constructive leaders (e.g., Franklin D. Roosevelt, Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and David Ben-Gurion) as well destructive ones (e.g., Charles Manson, Jim Jones, Adolf Hitler) and examines the psychological forces that produce such leaders and their followers. Popper proposes a relational model to describe leaders who transform society, a relationship based on the mutual needs of leaders and followers. These mutual needs can be based on regressive relationships (in which leaders and followers regress to a narcissistic/dependent father/child behavior--the Manson model), developmental relationships (in which leaders act to empower and rear their followers--FDR), and symbolic relationships (in which the leader becomes an emotional symbol for the followers, as in the case of Mandela). This interesting book will serve a variety of disciplines. Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty."

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