The Connective Edge: Leading in an Interdependent World

by Jean Lipman-Blumen

Overview

Connect with a new kind of leadership

Welcome to the Connective Era, an era of global competition that transforms arch-rivals into allies and compels them to cooperate in unprecedented ways—an era of fundamental change that demands a new approach to leadership. With this book, internationally acclaimed consultant Jean Lipman-Blumen defines that approach with a bold new model based on an innovative nine-part strategy. She provides historic examples from Wall Street to the Warsaw Pact, from Gorbachev to Ghandi. And she delineates the skills leaders need in order to flourish under the demands of interorganizational relationships, joint ventures, and strategic partnerships.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780787902438
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	05/16/1996
Series:	Business and Management Series
Pages:	401
Product dimensions:	6.32(w) x 9.61(h) x 1.41(d)

Table of Contents

Part One: The Changing Dynamics of Leadership
1. New World, New Leadership: A Fundamental Shift
2. Why Are We So Hooked on Leaders Anyway? The Psychological and Existential Foundations of Leadership
3. American Leadership: Understanding Our National Addiction to Individualism, Cooperation, and Authoritarianism
4. A New Era: Intimations of New Leadership
Part Two: The Connective Leadership Model
5. Mapping Leadership Styles: Direct, Relational and Instrumental
6. The Direct Routes to Success: The Intrinsic, Competitive, and Power Styles
7. The Relational Path to Leadership: The Collaborative, Contributory, and Vicarious Styles
8. The Instrumental Road Less Travelled: The Personal, Social, and Entrusting Styles
9. Connective Leadershiup: More than the Sum of its Parts
Part Three: Bridging to the Stage 3 World
10. The Collective Organization: Matching Leadership and Organizational Styles
11. Women Leaders: An Oxymoron? Or Does GAnder Make a Difference?
12. Connective Leadership and the Serious Issues: Life, Death, and the Search for Meaning

Editorial Reviews

"Quite simply, the book is a masterpiece. . . . Not since James McGregor Burns's book, Leadership, have I read a work that moves so easily from one social system to another." —Warren Bennis, founding chairman of The Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California and author of Why Leaders Can't Lead and An Invented Life

"Finally...a brilliant, readable, instructive and path-breaking book on leadership that does not grotesquely oversimplify this paramount task/job in society. Dare I say it? Jean Lipman-Blumen's rich, magisterial The Connective Edge is a page turner!" —Tom Peters

From the Publisher

Lipman-Blumen posits that organizations wanting to succeed in a world that is becoming more interdependent and more diverse simultaneously require a new leadership model. The book's three parts examine the origin and evolution of the human need for leadership, detail what is described as the Connective Leadership Model and explore the empirical organizational results and philosophical implications of this new model. Rightfully disdaining simplistic solutions, the author presents a complex design for the new leadership idealone that forms short-term coalitions to solve immediate problems (for example, George Bush and his Gulf War Alliance) and moves rapidly and adjusts easily to changing circumstances while taking a long-term perspective. The Connective Leadership Model combines "instrumentalism" with authenticity and accountability. Lipman-Blumen defines instrumentalism as a way of using both self and others to accomplish goals that are ethically good for the entire communitya kind of denatured Machiavellianism. The author argues powerfully for the necessity of a new type of leadership, but her model is at times fuzzy and difficult to grasp. Nor is it at all certain that when new-style leaders appear, their strengths will be appreciated and their guidance heeded. Gorbachev, praised by the author for his connective style, hardly shines as a successful role model. Lipman-Blumen serves as codirector of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Leadership at the Peter F. Drucker Graduate Management Center in Claremont, Calif. (July)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Yet another book on leadership? asks the author in her preface, and readers may still be asking that question after finishing this book. Relying on her extensive use of original leadership-analysis instruments with thousands of executives, Lipman-Blumen (Gender Roles and Power, 1984) approaches leadership in terms of connecting seemingly contradictory macro-level tensions, all the while honoring diversity. She offers an interesting discussion of the meaning of leadership in America, the stages of leadership development that led to this connective concept, and examples of known leaders from political, business, and social milieus. The bulk of the work explains nine styles of connective leadership, based on thousands of responses to assessment scales (not provided here). Thus, readers will have to contact the author directly to use those assessment tools. While intriguing, and a nice supplement to the theoretical concepts of Margaret Wheatley's Leadership and the New Science (LJ 8/92), this work sits in the shadow of Peter Block's Stewardship (LJ 6/15/93). Consider only on demand.Dale Farris, Groves, Tex.

Library Journal

Examines the psychological factors and the new approach to leadership necessitated by the shifting and reforming of organizational alliances. Lipman-Blumen, a consultant, organizational sociologist, and feminist scholar, explores the future of leadership with examples from Wall Street to the Warsaw Pact, from Gorbachev to Gandhi. She draws on research analyzing the leadership styles of some 5,000 leaders and managers worldwide. Arrangement is in three sections focusing on the changing dynamics of leadership, the connective leadership model, and the future. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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