Why is it that leaders – in social, political, and (most importantly) organisational contexts – are seemingly unable to address meaningfully the wicked problems and complex challenges that we currently face? There’s enormous busyness around reconfiguring departments and adopting ‘transformational’ operating models, but in general plus ca change, plus la meme chose. Eyewatering amounts of treasure and time are spent in corporate life on leadership development, with people working hard to try and demonstrate that something useful has happened as a result. An entire pseudo-science has emerged to try and prove its worth, in part to justify the economic dividend that goes to those who make it to the upper levels of positional power. The fetishisation of leadership, especially strong leadership, fills our news outlets holding up carefully distorted images of great men (leadership is still deeply gendered) from across the worlds of politics, business, and sports. This book explores the persistently disappeared and unacknowledged constraints that inhibit leaders in every context. It argues that these constraints – defined in this volume in terms of five organisational paradoxes and six management myths – are found at large in society and are especially impactful in organisational life. By calling attention to, and exploring in rigorous detail, these paradoxes and myths, this book helps leaders, and the leadership systems they are part of, to wriggle free of the tacit assumptions that lock them into a cul-de-sac of simplistic prescription and heroic individualism. Once these mind-forged manacles are removed, new forms of leadership practice become possible, ones that are fit for purpose in engaging with a world facing systemic crisis and existential risk. This book is essential reading for leaders and managers at all levels looking for solutions to traditionally simplistic leadership practice and who want to affect systemic change. It will be beneficial to all those in the world of leadership development including business schools and HR departments.

Education Policy Unravelled examines the nature of contemporary education policy, its purposes and political formation. This thoroughly revised edition charts the continuity of policy development along neo-liberal lines, taking a historical perspective broadly from the 19th century and towards the emerging position of the current Conservative government in the UK. This new edition now includes: - the developments in education policy which took place under the Coalition government administration between 2010-2015; - a brand new chapter on policy developments in early childhood education and care; - a brand new chapter on inclusive schools, special educational needs and disability; - new activities and illustrative case studies to challenge and inform students' thinking and understanding around key policy issues; - discussion of new research and recent legislation to illuminate important and emergent issues in education. Written in an accessible style, this is an invaluable guide for engaging with education policy as it uses a variety of key elements of policy theory in order to support students through some of the complexities involved in contemporary policy analysis and critique.

The unique leadership challenges organizations face throughout the world call for a renewed focus on what constitutes "authentic, inclusive, servant, transformational, principled, values-based, and mindful" leadership. Traditional approaches rarely provide a permeating or systematic framework to garner a sense of higher purpose or nurture deeper moral and spiritual dimensions of leaders. Learning to be an effective leader requires a deep personal transformation, which is not easy. This text provides guidelines in a variety of settings and contexts while presenting best practices in successfully leading the twenty-first century workforce and offering strategies and tools to lead change effectively in the present-day boundary-less work environment. Given the ever-growing, widespread importance of leadership and its role in initiating change, this will be a key reference work in the field of leadership and change management in business. The uniqueness of this book lies in its anchorage in the moral and spiritual dimension of leadership, an approach most relevant for contemporary times and organizations. It represents an important milestone in the perennial quest for discovering the best leadership models and change practices to suit the contemporary organizations. Designed to be a resource for scholars, practitioners, teachers and students seeking guidance in the art and science of leadership and change management, this will be an invaluable reference for libraries with collections in business, management, sports, history, politics, law, and psychology. It will present essential strategies for leading and transforming corporations, small businesses, schools, hospitals, and various nonprofit organizations. It brings the research on leadership and change management up to date, while mapping its terrain and extending the scope and boundaries of this field in an inclusive and egalitarian manner.

In an unpredictable world, how do we go about supporting leaders to develop more democratic and inclusive ways of working and living? The second edition of Leadership Development in Practice: A Complexity Approach draws on autoethnographic accounts of experience from practitioners across three continents to explore the leadership development approaches that best support managers to work with uncertainty by taking their experience seriously. It offers an alternative perspective on leadership and organisation for business schools, consultancies, and corporate training functions to adopt in their development of leaders. Additions to this second edition include as follows: A new chapter on creating large group dialogue A more explicit emphasis on what it means to take gender, diversity, and social justice seriously A review of the burgeoning interest in complexity perspectives on leadership and leadership development since publication of the first edition This book is essential reading for leadership and organisational development professionals, researchers, and students. It will also be of interest to managers looking for an approach to leadership development that works with how things are rather than with idealisations of how things ought to be.

Conclusively, resilience, education, financial inclusion, digital transformation, strategic partnerships, and particularly change management are needed when crises occur in order to save and advance organizational ecosystems and economies. Therefore, it is crucial to know about the ideation and processes of change management to improve companies’ negative circumstances. Change Management During Unprecedented Times examines organizational change management through the lenses of research and innovative practices contained within the fields of leadership and organizational change. The book enlightens communities through the efforts of a research perspective that amplifies practice-based potential in applying theory, models, and frameworks to real-time issues. Covering topics such as technology, ethics, entrepreneurship, and communication, this reference work is ideal for business owners, managers, researchers, scholars, academicians, practitioners, instructors, and students.

Most research into leadership has presented leaders as heroic, charismatic and transformational ‘visionaries’. The leader, whether in business, politics or any other field, is the most important factor in determining whether organizations succeed or fail. Indeed, despite the fundamental mistakes which have, arguably, directly led to global economic recession, it is often still taken for granted that transformational leadership is a good thing, and that leaders should have much more power than followers to decide what needs to be done. The Dark Side of Transformational Leadership confronts this orthodoxy by illustrating how such approaches can encourage narcissism, megalomania and poor decision-making on the part of leaders, at great expense to those organizations they are there to serve. Written in a lively and engaging style, the book uses a number of case studies to illustrate the perils of transformational leadership, from the Jonestown tragedy in 1978 when over 900 people were either murdered or committed suicide at the urging of their leader, to an analysis of how banking executives tried to explain away their role in the 2008 financial crisis This provocative and hugely important book offers a rare critical perspective in the field of leadership studies. Concluding with a new approach that offers an alternative to the dominant transformational model, The Dark Side of Transformational Leadership will be an invaluable text for academics interested in leadership, students on leadership courses requiring a more critical perspective, and anyone concerned with how people lead people, and the lessons we can learn.

Silence always has something to say – it’s never neutral and speaks volumes if people are willing to hear. Our response to silence is often to dismiss or end it, to block it out with noise. Instead, silence needs to be taken seriously. This book explores the importance of understanding silence and shows how we can move from merely listening to truly hearing those around us. The interplay of voice and silence in organisational life is not straightforward. We can feel pressured to speak and compelled to keep our silence. Knowing how to read silence, to make sense of its generative and degenerative capacity, is a rarely developed skill among managers and leaders at all levels – who have been brought up to see silence as evidence of compliance or a weakness to be addressed. But it is a critical skill for managers and employees alike. Written by two experts in organisational development, this book explores different types of silence and their implications for organisational practice, digging into the theoretical roots and engaging with real stories and voices. It provides everyone at work with an understanding of the different meanings of silence and how to engage well with it. When to stay with it, when to join in with it, and when to be struck by what’s not being said and do something about it. The Great Unheard at Work is essential reading for corporate leaders, HR professionals in all sectors, business students, professionals, and anyone interested in leadership development.