Managing Leadership: Toward a New and Usable Understanding of What Leadership Really is-and How to Manage it by Jim Stroup Search Amazon for other books by or about Jim Stroup. Rating: Reviewed by: John Walsh

Some years ago I taught at an Islamic women's university in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. As part of the development effort of that country the ruler, Sheikh Zayed, had identified promoting leadership as an important way of empowering the women of the country and transforming society. It was left to the faculty to try to determine exactly what form or forms of leadership might be suitable for this context and, indeed, whether there is a single unified definition of leadership that might be applied. The second stage, after a consensus had been reached (which it had not, really, by the time I left), would be to devise ways to inculcate the agreed form of leadership into the students.

This process made it evident that there are numerous forms of behaviour that are associated by people in different ways with leadership. It also made it clear forms of leadership that focus on charismatic individuals charging (perhaps figuratively) towards the enemy are not likely to be useful for all social situations. These are conclusions with which Jim Stroup, author of Managing Leadership, might have a degree of sympathy. As a former member of the American military forces – the Marines – it is clear that the military experience has considerably shaped and influenced Stroup's conception of leadership. He describes, as a central part of his argument, the ways in which modern organisations of any size are such complex phenomena with so many multifarious and ambivalent connections with the rest of the world that it is next to impossible for any one person to lead. Lead, that is, in the sense of the charismatic individual leader. Hence, such a conception of a business leader is no longer appropriate, even if it had ever been.

Stroup's experience tells him that most of the functions with which leadership is usually associated – rapid reaction to changed environmental conditions, innovation, and crisis management, for example – is generally present deep within organisations already. Individuals in various positions are capable of exhibiting these forms of leadership and are, in any case, much closer to the specific situation and, therefore, able more swiftly and effectively to deal with it. What the overall leader and manager should be doing, therefore, is to facilitate the ability of such individuals to exhibit these forms of leadership when required, acknowledging examples of when it has occurred and genuinely rewarding people and informing everyone what has happened, thereby increasing the chances of others wishing to follow the example.

Leadership continues to be an important subject, not least in a situation in which it is claimed the western world is a war against terror and that this has implications for the ways in which we are led. Scholars, serious business thinkers, and practitioners will all find much of interest in this book.