The Extraordinary Leader

by John H. Zenger, Joseph Folkman

Overview

Secrets for developing leadership and competitive advantage in any organization

The Extraordinary Leader is a research-based book about leadership. It analyzes 200,000 assessments from 20,000 managers and presents new insights that demystify this complex subject. It clearly establishes the importance of developing great leaders versus being satisfied with merely good ones, and highlights the link between leadership behavior and an organization's performance.

From the authors' research, a new model of leadership emerges that challenges long-held beliefs about leadership competencies. The authors identify 16 competencies that tower above all the others-­­the ones that separate great leaders from the average. One of the book's major breakthroughs is its focus on the importance of maximizing strengths as opposed to merely correcting weaknesses. Further, the importance of balanced strengths is introduced: when strengths are clustered in one area, the leader is less effective than he or she could be with strengths in different areas.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780071415903
Publisher:	McGraw Hill LLC
Publication date:	08/15/2002
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

John H. Zenger, D.B.A., is the CEO and co-founder of Zenger/Folkman, a firm that employes evidence-based, positive methods to strengthen organizations and those who lead them. In 1994 he was inducted into the Human Resource Development Hall of Fame. He is the author or co-author of seven books on leadership and teams and is considered one of the most authoritative voices on improving organizational performance and developing leadership.

Joseph Folkman, Ph.D., is the president and co-founder of Zenger/Folkman. He is a renowned expert in the field of survey design and data analysis. His passion to provide feedback and facilitate change is the source of his professional success. He is the author of four books: Turning Feedback Into Change, Making Feedback Work, Employee Surveys That Make a Difference andThe Power of Feedback.

Read an Excerpt

Sometime in October, about six weeks after the attack, several friends and readers remarked to me, ``Your columns are really angry.'' I honestly hadn't thought about it, but once they pointed it out I said, ``You know, I am angry.'' I was angry that my country had been violated in this way, angry at the senseless deaths of so many innocent people, angry at the megalomaniacal arrogance of Osama bin Laden and his men, who so blithely assumed that their grievance, whatever it was, justified this mass murder. I was angry that my stock broker, Mark Madden, lost his brother in one of the Trade Center Towers, and angry at all the analyses about why people around the world hate America -- when all I could think about was how much I hated these terrorists.

But most of all, of course, I was angry that the America I had grown up in would never quite be the same for my two daughters, ages thirteen and sixteen. It only took a couple of weeks after Sept. 11 before my daughter Orly's county youth orchestra, which had been planning a tour to Italy over the summer -- a tour which had motivated Orly to practice extra hard all summer in order to retain her chair in the violin section -- announced that the trip was canceled. It was too dangerous for an American orchestra to be traveling around Italy, the staff concluded. I thought this was an awful decision. In fact, I was outraged. But other parents were more worried, and there was no persuading them otherwise -- although I wanted to. It was a new world knocking, and I didn't want to let it in.

Ditto at my daughter Natalie's junior high school. She was supposed to take a class trip to New York three weeks after Sept. 11. We had a parents' meeting. The overwhelming sentiment was against going. Some of the teachers said their own kids would be afraid to see them go. I understood, but I didn't understand. It was a new world knocking, and I didn't want to let it in. So I refused to acknowledge that there was any reason to change any plans. I insisted on going to concerts and Baltimore Oriole's baseball games; I chafed at the extra searches suddenly imposed at Camden Yards, and got enraged while standing in long security lines at Dulles Airport. It was a new world knocking -- not the one I had grown up in, but the one my girls would now grow up in -- and I didn't want to let it in.

To be honest, it wasn't only about my kids. Because, as a journalist, I often travel to war zones and other not particularly nice places, coming home to America has always had a special feel for me. Often I would come home from trips abroad -- to Russia or Venezuela, the West Bank or Africa -- and my wife would ask me how it was, and I would answer: ``You know, honey, the wheels aren't on very tight out there.'' I would often come home and marvel at things like Camden Yards -- the beautiful downtown stadium in Baltimore -- or the sleek, clean subway system in Washington, and think to myself how much community, how many tax dollars and how much sheer working together by different people, by different government agencies and the private sector, it took to build these public institutions. And I would think how great it was to live in a country that could come together to create the public goods and public spaces that make up the quilt and quality of American society. No matter how crazy the world was out there, America was my cocoon that I could always crawl back into, where my girls would always be safe.

That's what was violated on Sept. 11, and it was violated by people who didn't even know us.

That's why the American in me was so angry. But the reporter in me was also very curious. Who exactly were these people? What historical forces produced them? So these two impulses -- anger and curiosity -- have been my emotional companions ever since Sept. 11, wrestling for my head and heart, one winning one day and the other the next. They have been the hammer an anvil out of which every one of my columns was forged.

Table of Contents

The Extraordinary Leader Chapter 1: Demystifying Leadership Chapter 2: Great Leaders Make a Great Difference Chapter 3: Simplifying Leadership Chapter 4: The Competency Quest Chapter 5: Leaders Must Fit Their Organization Chapter 6: Fatal Flaws Must Be Fixed Chapter 7: New Insights into Leadership Development Chapter 8: A Case Study in Leadership Development-The U.S. Marine Corps Chapter 9: What Individuals Do to Become Great Leaders Chapter 10: The Organization's Role in Developing Leaders

What People are Saying About This

E. Spong

Extraordinarily readable! This book represents some of the best thinking on leadership I've seen in a long while.
— President, Military Aerospace Support, The Boeing Company

Marshall Goldsmith

Marshall Goldsmith, Named by Forbes as one of five top executive coaches and one of Wall Street Journal's "Top 10" executive educators
This is a 'must read' for coaches, leaders, and those who develop them. The Extraordinary Leader goes beyond anecdotes or 'war stories,' it builds upon comprehensive research. It is destined to be a classic in our field.

E. David Spong

E. David Spong, President, Military Aerospace Support, The Boeing Company
Extraordinarily readable! This book represents some of the best thinking on leadership I've seen in a long while.

James M. Kouzes

Praise for The Extraordinary Leader:

The Extraordinary Leader attacks cherished but unsupportable assumptions, and does it persuasively, precisely, and professionally. Through their exceptional research the authors demonstrate and prove that leadership does make a difference, and that you can learn to lead.
—(James M. Kouzes, Chairman Emeritus, Tom Peters Company, Coauthor, The Leadership Challenge and Encouraging the Heart)