What Do Leaders Really Do?: Getting under the skin of what makes a great leader tick

Foreword ix

Introduction xi

Acknowledgements xiv

Part One 1

1 Characteristics of Leadership 3

The charisma question 10

A substitute for charisma 12

Leadership by osmosis 14

2 Background 17

The influence of family life 20

Education 22

Learning leadership 26

Career progression 27

3 Influences 31

The influence of parents 32

The influence of teachers 35

The influence of bosses 37

Mentors and mentoring 43

Part Two 45

4 Vision 47

Creating the vision 49

Communicating the vision 54

Long or short term? 59

5 Decision-making and Risk 63

Military mission analysis 68

Risk and the military 70

Risk and business leaders 73

6 Mistakes and Setbacks 79

Learning from experience 85

Analysing failure and success 89

7 Change Management 93

Why do most change initiatives fail? 96

Communicating change 99

Culture change 102

Early days, quick wins 104

Part Three 109

8 Empathetic and Authentic Leadership 111

Empathetic leadership 113

Caring leadership 116

Sensing mood 118

Delivering bad news 121

Authentic leadership 124

The stories people tell 128

Visibility 131

Keep your distance 133

9 Motivation, Inspiration and Morale 135

Celebrating successes 140

Morale 142

Inspirational leadership 144

The role of oration 147

10 Choosing and Building a Team 151

The power of diversity 154

Trust 157

Developing future leaders 159

Preparing for success 160

Teamship rules and professionalism 162

Team spirit 164

11 Communication 167

Too much talk? 168

Authentic communication 171

Honesty and integrity 174

Communicating outside the company 176

Dealing with the media 177

12 Looking After No 1 181

Creating space to think 184

Self-improvement and learning 187

Recommended reading 189

Leadership and lifelong learning 190

Knowing when to quit 192

Final thoughts on leadership 195

Appendix 197

Bibliography and Further Reading 202

Index 204