1. Setting the Stage for the Future.
2. The Organization of the Future
3. The Leader of the Future.
4. How Leaders Stay on Top of Their Game.
5. Insights from Young Leaders.
The result is an insightful examination on the state of leadership today and the challenges it can expect to experience in the future. For example, Bennis writes the first essay and presents a number of challenging issues, including the widening disparity of talent among income levels, growing demographic changes between young and old and balancing the demands of work and home. James O'Toole looks at the organization of the future and remarks that leaders should view their tasks "as creating the systems under which others would be encouraged to do all the things that typically end up on the desk of the do-it-all leader."
The Future of Leadership is a comprehensive examination of leadership today and tomorrow provided by a number of insightful modern day thinkers. It asks some judicious questions and dares to look into the future with assurance and confidence. Some essays are better written than others, but every reader will find some valuable material and learn a new perspective from its pages.
Answering these questions are top researchers, professors, commentators and consultants. The variety of authors provides a rich tapestry of information, experiences and opinions. What are the keys to great leadership? What makes one high-performing team do great things (The Manhattan Project) and another perpetrate evil (The Final Solution)? As the percent of one's life likely to be engaged in full-time employment declines (from 50 of 68 years in 1960 to 38 of 76 years today), how does this affect the way we lead and live? What happens when good leaders go bad? Is leadership aptitude widely distributed or possessed by a select few? Are business schools up to the task of developing the management and leadership talent for tomorrow?
Given the approximately hundreds of articles and dozens of books on leadership published each year, you might expect to have had these answers or at least these questions raised before. "The future of leadership" offers a fresh, readable perspective, for the business student and the manager. Sure, you might quibble with the eclectic responses and styles of this broad spectrum of authors, but the quality lies in their diversity.