Did some challenging reading over the first week of vacation time in the area of leadership (one of my favorite reading topics!). The first book I read was Gary L. McIntosh & Samuel D. Rima, Sr.'s Overcoming the Dark Side of Leadership (Baker, 1997). The authors did a great job reviewing the explaining the importance of understanding the dark side of leadership and then identified five types: compulsive, narcissistic, paranoid, codependent, and passive-aggressive. My personal self-analysis says that the two I am most susceptible to are "narcissistic" and "compulsive." (There's probably a couple people reading this who think I am also susceptible to "paranoid" but I wouldn't trust their conspiracy theories!)
The other book I am reading (not quite done) is Edwin H. Friedman's A Failure of Nerve (Church Publishing, 1999 & 2007). The author approaches the book from the perspective that in many situations ranging from family counseling to education to church ministry to business leadership, the well-differentiated person who is willing to "show some nerve" is the one who is most capable of leading a family/organization back to health. Regardless of the range of methods/techniques/theories that are prescribed in various contexts, it will be the person who is differentiated who will make meaningful (=lasting) change.
The first portion of the book describes how the cartographers of the late 1400's and early 1500's were sooooo wrong and yet discovery of new locations was "impossible" because of their erroneous maps and assumptions about the world/universe... and then how Columbus and so many others proved the "experts" wrong. The second portion of the book describes how continuing advances in medical/biological research show things about cells and diseases that have interesting parallels to human relationships. The discussion of the "self" within this context is quite interesting. A very interesting and mentally challenging read that provides some interesting insights into leadership.
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