New book review for Leadership Conversations: Challenging High Potential Managers to Become Great Leaders, by Alan S. Berson and Richard G. Stieglitz, Jossey-Bass, 2013, reposted here:
The content of this book centers around different types of leadership conversations: to build relationships, to develop others, to make decisions, and to take action. A discussion on management versus leadership begins the text, and a discussion on how the reader might take next steps within the context of personal level within the management and leadership hierarchy ends the text. The content is broken down well into chapters consisting on average less than ten pages each, and comprises some of the most organized content that I have recently seen in business publications.
For my personal consulting career, the following chapters were probably the most appreciated: chapter 4 ("Where Do You Stand on the Leadership Ladder?"), chapter 16 ("Develop Your Judgment Gene"), chapter 18 ("Be Curious - Ask Great Questions"), chapter 21 ("Planning Successful Actions"), chapter 22 ("When Things Change"), and chapter 23 ("Lessons from Success and Failure"). Apart from chapter 4, which falls in the introductory section, the rest of these chapters fall in part 4 ("Conversations to Make Decisions") and part 5 ("Conversations to Take Action") of the text.
In my opinion, the title of this book along with the summaries that I had read prior to acquiring this book are somewhat misleading, which is in agreement with some other reviewers here. Quite simply, there are very few actual examples of dialogue provided. So although there is some good content, the practical aspect of much of this content simply does not stand on its own. If you have read similar books in this genre, and especially if you have some level of management or leadership experience, the content provided by the authors will be much more easily applied, as long as you are willing to dig at the content a bit.
One of the more interesting aspects of this book is that "leader" is seen to be a step up the typical organizational ladder from "manager". My consulting career views these functions differently, with "manager" typically corresponding to title, and "leader" typically corresponding with role. Essentially, what this means is that anyone can be a leader regardless of title. Manager functions can be situational as well depending on consulting assignment, but these are typically reserved for clients, since the bulk of the work is typically performed by leaders, and management functions at the project level are typically not deeply engaged.
Readers should be aware that this book centers around the traditional organizational structures created by consulting firms decades ago, updated for the modern workplace. Chapter 4 explains the "first-line manager", "manager of managers", "executive leader", and "CXO leader" maturity levels for managers and leaders well, synching up each of these levels with the four different types of leadership conversations mentioned previously (building relationships, developing others, making decisions, and taking action). Based on the presentation, my experience falls within the first two maturity levels.
The discussion in chapter 16 expands this earlier discussion to explain how each of these maturity levels tackle what the authors indicate are the six decision-making elements that leaders do well every time: defining the problem, identifying the alternatives, evaluating pros and cons, assessing risks, acquiring resources, and producing results. Within this discussion, the authors argue that from their experience, leaders who consistently make good decisions teach their people to use a structured and repeatable process to make decisions, which might provide a sanity check for readers who work with those who seem to think that this is not the case.
Chapter 23 provides what I consider one of the more important personal take-aways. "Most leadership decisions are made at substantially lower confidence levels. The opportunity cost of gaining near certainty is generally too high compared to the benefits (when lives are not at stake). Ask your team what would be an adequate confidence level, have conversations about the completeness and reliability of the information you have, and then make the decision and take action. Operating in the leadership mindset, let your people figure out the details as they move forward with the actions. Toggling between a leadership mindset and a management mindset in making decisions and trusting people is difficult for some technically minded executives. Yet they must do so to inspire their high potentials into action."