Adopted at more than 1600 institutions and translated into 13 different languages, this book provides an in depth review of the present theories and models of leadership. After providing leadership definitions from 1900 to the present, chapters present all the current theories, providing an academic account of each theory. The theories covered are as follows:

2. Trait Approach
3. Skills Approach
4. Behavioral Approach
5. Situational Approach
6. Path-Goal Approach
7. Leader-Member Exchange Approach
8. Transformational Approach
9. Authentic Approach
10. Servant Approach
11. Adaptive Approach
12. Followership
13. Leadership Ethics
14. Team Leadership
15. Gender and Leadership
16. Culture and Leadership

All theories are presenting by reviewing their development, noting strengths and criticisms, case studies, and instruments available to measure the theory. Each chapter also ends with a brief summary of the theory under consideration.

An exceptional resource to review leadership theories and models from a robust academic standpoint.

This book covers various concepts of and ideas about leadership. Each chapter provides a thumbnail sketch of a particular leadership theory or approach, followed by an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the theory and case studies. Many of the chapters also include survey instruments so that aspiring leaders can assess themselves against the leadership theory in question. The chapters are arranged roughly chronologically, beginning with older models of leadership (e.g. trait approach, skills approach, etc.) and moving up to more contemporary leadership models (e.g. adaptive leadership, the psychodynamic approach, etc.)

This is one of the more enjoyable textbooks I can remember reading. I don't know if I liked it so much because it was that well written or if I simply found the subject matter compelling. Or perhaps leadership is just on my mind right now; there are some major leadership transitions occurring at my workplace and I have been thinking a lot about what it takes to be a good leader.

In any event, I found it easy to turn the pages on this one. Perhaps it is simply because leadership is a topic that affects us all. If the topic interests you, this book is a nice overview of the history of leadership theories with some thoughts on their application in modern organizations.

Read this before buying any other self-help leadership books. This overviews all of the main leadership methodologies. After reading this, a person could decide which of them they want to investigate further.
I like texts that have challenging quesitons. All review questions were on the student site. The text itself had no questions. The site didn't require a log in. For each chapter, I looked at two documents "Questions" and "Exercises". Some of the exercises were good enough to provoke some deep thinking, but most questions only want the reader to summarize what they'd read. Also on the web site were links to videos and full journal articles related to each chapter. The articles could be used for a much deeper experience.
Improvements needed: 1) Sometimes the author used a term such as teleological before defining it. 2) The summary sections don't add anything to the discussion, but just rehash the materials.

Theories don't take critical social theory into account and are one-dimensional, although they spell out basic framework in an easy to read manner.

Read for a class.

“Leadership is the subject which is most studied but least understood” remarked James Macgregor Bruns the pioneer of the field with his book which came in 1978.This review will be first of the three books which I read for preparation of a lecture as well as for designing a module on leadership. I have always been wary of studying the popular yet evasive concepts like leadership. The popularity makes a subject personalized due to experiences. The exclusivity and distinction of a specialized knowledge is lost in translation when each one of us judges on personal experiences. Still I have tried, involuntarily to start with, and by no means has this quest been less than fascinating.

The first step is categorization. Leadership is being studied from four perspectives or disciplines. The first one is that of history. Historians chronicled the lives of great people and these chronicles gave insights into leadership. These insights though anecdotal and impressionistic have remain popular and as the interests into the biographies of the leaders like Napoleon and Churchill keeps on sustaining despite the presence of dozens of biographies. The second field is that of management. Managerial leader is the new leader. Most of the courses of leadership in western universities revolve around managerial leader who would become CEOs, turn around companies, trigger innovation and make immense amount of money in the process. Alongside management , the psychology also stepped in, as the leadership discipline was thought to be revolving around personality , motivation and behavior. Finally, the self-help gurus caught up soon. The shops are flooded with the to-do lists of leadership with promises to unleash the inner leader.

The first book which I chose is primarily a management leadership book but also touches upon other approaches. It is ‘Leadership; Theory and Practice” by Peter Northouse. The book is in seventh edition and published by Sage, a well-known publishing house. The starting point is early twentieth century when the leadership studies became popular. The book is essentially a book about the leadership studies and research instead of leadership, and understandably because being elusive nature of subject itself. It starts with simple and accepted definition of leadership “Leadership is a process whereby an individual influences group of individuals to achieve a common goal”. Each chapter is then built around a specific leadership model ; how it originated , how is it applied , its strengths and weaknesses.

The story of leadership starts with ‘Great man theories’. These have been in thinking since the days of earliest historian of leadership, Plutarch and his LIVES Fast forward to nineteenth century and comes Thomas Carlyle with “On Heroes , Hero worship and heroic in history”. History was thus nothing but biographies of great men. This provided little help when it came to the academic test. Still the Great Man model was not easily discarded and thus came the “Trait approach”. The great men had certain traits which made them great. They had to be intelligent, extrovert and ambitious. The trait approach evolved into “Skills approach” and the leaders were supposed to have technical , human and conceptual skills. Stodgill complied summed these into the skills of intelligence , creativity, oratory , diplomacy , persuasiveness and social skills. Though some of these skills were more like traits. Even the narrower focus was of not much help. There was and there is marked difference in fortunes of the people with same skills and traits.

The time was ripe for the behavioral and approaches to leadership. A grid was devised by Blake and Mouton and leadership styles were developed. A leader was either job oriented or people oriented. This era was a bonanza for consultants. The idea that leadership is a teachable led to million dollar industry. But style was not enough so a “situational approach” has been developed. The type of leadership depends on situation and the style has to conform to the level of challenge. At the same time, leadership became more focused through the “path-goal approach” which expects leader to clear the goal, gives the path , removes obstacles and support employees. There was also emphasis on the dynamics of leaders and followers and their being locked in a dyad and interdependent relationship.

Transformational approach was a big milestone in leadership studies. More so because the recognition of the transactional approach which is based on the rules, status quo and give and take. A leader was expected to do more ; transform , revive and change. The transformation is not possible unless the leader is charismatic , committed , dynamic ,visionary with emphasis on morality. Now the distinction between leader and manager was more than clear. Burns pioneered this and Bennis and Nuns , and Kouzes and Posner further improved it. One remembers Bennis from his quote about Managers doing the things right while leader doing the right things. The morality has become a subject in leadership recently with the corporate scandals and financial crisis. There is “Authentic leadership approach” as well as “Ethical leadership”. There has also been more focus on participation and team building with Team leadership or “distributed leadership” calling for more flattened structures and consultative decision making. “Servant leadership” takes the participation to next level with ten characteristics and thrust on altruism and service. There is also discussion on gender and culture, and why there is difference between male and female , and why some groups are disadvantaged for leadership position.

The book “Leadership; theory and practice” is useful and informative. It captures the original research but is also an easy read with a structured approach. Each approach has been explained with three or four case studies and the work sheet to determine the particular model. It has something for everyone i.e students, teachers and managers, and is good starting point for the discipline.

What are the lessons learnt about leadership? The various models and approaches discussed are not mutually exclusive i.e it is not that trait and skills models are redundant after advent of behavioral and transformation approaches. Some part of each has relevance to some scenario or situation. There is need to build more into the knowledge base of this discipline especially with leadership more discussed and less understood.

Had to read it for a course. It was about what you’d expect for a textbook about leadership.

I just read this book for my MBA Leadership class and very much enjoyed it. Most of the books I read for classes are painful - but this was not only easy to ready, it was interesting and something that was relevant.

I read the 9th edition of this book as part of my course work at Penn State on Psychology of Leadership. I enjoyed every chapter and I re-read some. What made it worthwhile was reading this book in a class room setting.

This book was very eye opening and definitely changed my views of leadership.

The textbook focuses more on the theories of leadership. It's an excellent introduction for those interested in doing research in the field. Newport summarizes each leadership theory, with practical examples, and concludes with a set of questions on the strengths and criticism for each approach, which provides an amply opportunity for further research. The last few chapters are written by guest authors.

Read for class on leadership. There were some very interesting ideas but also common sense. A bland book.