Real Leadership

What is a real leader? For Dean Williams, the traditional image of the leader as someone who mesmerizes a group with his or her charisma and manages to convince people to follow the vision that he or she proposes is no longer valid. A real leader is rather someone who enables the members of the group to collectively surmount the challenges confronting them. To do this, akin to the Norse god Odin – a recurrent reference in the book – a real leader must play the role of agitator, teacher, facilitator or father figure, depending on the circumstances.
These principles are summarized in chapter 2, recommended as the first stop for pressed readers. This chapter offers the instructive counter-example of Captain Bligh, typical “false” leader who failed badly both as captain of the Bounty and as governor of the State of New South Wales in Australia. Dean Williams recounts the adventures of such historical figures as parables offering enlightening lessons.
The second part of the book is devoted to the major challenges facing leaders. These challenges can be classified into three categories, i.e. help the community develop new competencies (chapters 4 and 7), move people’s mindset in the desired direction (chapters 3 and 5) and stand up for the group in times of crisis (chapters 6 and 8). Each of these chapters is illustrated with an example that serves as a guiding thread, including that of Alice Paul (chapter 3), the Singaporean leader Lee Kuan-Yew (chapter 4) and Franklin D. Roosevelt (chapter 8).
Chapter 2 contains many suggestions for determining which challenge to tackle first. Finally, chapter 9 uses the very detailed example of Lawrence of Arabia to show how a leader can obtain spectacular results by identifying challenges as they arise and by adopting the right strategies at the right time to address these challenges.