The Leadership Experience 6th Edition

Book Preface

Many leaders have recently had their assumptions challenged about how organizationssucceed. Leaders are struggling to make sense of the shifting environment and learn how to lead effectively and successfully in the midst of turmoil. The crisis in the housing, mortgage, and finance industries and resulting recession; the failures of several large, long-standing organizations and the government bailout of others; volatile oil prices; ethical scandals; political turmoil; and other events have dramatically shifted the organizational and economic landscape. This edition of The Leadership Experience addresses themes and issues that are directly relevant to the current turbulent environment. My vision for the sixth edition is to give students an exciting, applied, and comprehensive view of what leadership is like in today’s world. The Leadership Experience integrates recent ideas and applications with established scholarly research in a way that makes the topic of leadership come alive. Organizations are undergoing major changes, and this textbook addresses the qualities and skills leaders need in this rapidly evolving world.

Recent chaotic events, combined with factors such as a growing need for creativity and innovation in organizations, the rise of social media, the growth of e-business and mobile commerce, the use of virtual teams and telecommuting, globalization, the emerging problem of cybercrime, and other ongoing transformations place new demands on leaders that go far beyond the topics traditionally taught in courses on management or organizational behavior. My experiences teaching leadership to students and managers, and working with leaders to change their organizations, have affirmed for me the value of traditional leadership concepts while highlighting the importance of including new ideas and applications.

The Leadership Experience thoroughly covers the history of leadership studies and the traditional theories but goes beyond that to incorporate valuable ideas such as leadership vision, shaping culture and values, leadership courage, and the importance of moral leadership. The book expands the treatment of leadership to capture the excitement of the subject in a way that motivates students and challenges them to develop their leadership potential.

NEW TO THE SIXTH EDITION

A primary focus for revising The Leadership Experience, sixth edition, has been to relate leadership concepts and theories to events in today’s turbulent environment. Each chapter has been thoroughly revised and updated to bring in current issues and events that leaders are facing.

Topics that have been added or expanded in the sixth edition include:

• the importance of self-awareness for leadership
• developing a global mindset
• elements of personal mastery
• the influence of emotions on performance
• emotional contagion
• leadership courage as a skill
• managing up and down the hierarchy
• follower sources of power
• leadership coaching
• positive and negative motives that influence people to act
• building a thriving workforce
• the making progress principle
• psychological and job design elements of empowerment
• the leader as a sensegiver
• candid communication
• using storytelling to influence
• redundant communication
• using social media for leadership
• essential team competencies
• team task and socioemotional roles
• balancing conflict and cooperation
• employee affinity groups
• minority sponsorship
• diversity of thought
• Machiavellian-style leadership
• cocreating a vision
• steps for implementing strategy
• building a high-performance culture through attention to both values and results
• facilitating creativity by enabling immersion and allowing pauses
• the transition required for people to change behavior
• helping people change with a positive emotional attractor.

The book also includes several new cases for analysis that are related to new topics and current issues.

The Leadership Experience continues to offer students great opportunities for self-assessment and leadership development. An important aspect of learning to be a leader involves looking inward for greater self-understanding, and the sixth edition provides numerous opportunities for this reflection. Each chapter includes multiple questionnaires or exercises that enable students to learn about their own leadership beliefs, values, competencies, and skills. These exercises, several of which are new to this edition, help students gauge their current standing and connect the chapter concepts and examples to ideas for expanding their own leadership abilities.

A few of the self-assessment topics involve engagement, networking, ethical maturity, personality traits, leading diverse people, developing a personal vision, spiritual leadership, candor, leadership courage, optimism, and leading with love versus leading with fear. Self-assessments related to basic leadership abilities such as listening skills, emotional intelligence, motivating others, and using power and influence are also included. Additional self-assessments are available within CengageNOW.