SIX PATHS TO LEADERSHIP

A debut business book offers an academic assessment of how leaders approach their roles.

This work explores leadership by defining the paths people take to their positions of authority. Clark and Persily divide leaders into six broad categories, which they call “Insider, Outsider, Representative, Proxy, Creator, and Legacy,” based on dozens of interviews with executives of businesses and government institutions. Insiders, for instance, are promoted from within an establishment while Creators start new organizations. The book discusses themes, like credibility, resources, and expertise, that are experienced differently across the six categories. The authors then examine each category in its own chapter, addressing the unique challenges and opportunities each type tends to experience. The meat of the volume is the substantial excerpts from Clark and Persily's interviews with the executives, which are used as specific illustrations of the general trends, recommendations, and conclusions of the research. Most of the executives are identified by name and organization, not anonymized, adding to the book’s authority as it demonstrates the characteristics shared by leaders across roles and industries. The interviews with elected and appointed officials are particularly intriguing, allowing the volume’s theory of leadership to extend beyond the C-suite. Unlike many books on business and organizational leadership, this one wouldn’t fit naturally in a self-help section. The volume follows an academic structure, with figures and subsections identified by number, and the tone is one of observation rather than cheerleading (“Michael Waldron discusses situations, noted through his work as outside legal counsel, where the outside hire must demonstrate sensitivity in building support and implementing changes that he or she was brought into enact”). Although it avoids the you-can-do-it approach of more commercial works in the genre, this book is filled with recommendations for actions, strategies, and approaches that readers can apply to their own circumstances, both in the main text and in an appendix and companion website. Clark and Persily make a solid case in favor of their six categories and demonstrate the practical applicability of their theoretical approach.

An informative and useful look at different types of leadership experiences.