This book is about the personal development of leaders and is the book that writes up the experience that Penny Ferguson has had over a period of ten years designing and facilitating a “personal leadership program.” The book follows, as she puts it, “a similar path of discovery to the program.” It includes chapters on “Integral performance”, “Behind the mask”, “Accept responsibility”, “Communicate responsibility”, “Leaders listen”, “Developing the right people”, “Demonstrating value” “Style of leadership”, “Where am I headed?”, “Living in the present”, “Company culture” and finally “Proof of the pudding”. This final chapter contains a number of case studies, possibly testimonials illustrating how Penny Ferguson's approach has worked in practice, written by people who have participated in her program.
This is a book that should, if read in the spirit intended by the author, inspire existing leaders and aspiring leaders to be different. It is not a book about what to do – it is about how to be. This, of course, then sets up the rather paradoxical state of needing to know what to do in order to be different. The chapter on listening, “Leaders listen” illustrates the problem. The issue is not whether or not leaders listen, but how they listen, which is all predicated on leaders wanting to listen and understanding the purposes and techniques of “incisive” questions – seeing listening, rather than telling, as the key leadership role. Telling denies those who are led the responsibility for their own decisions. If they are doing what the leader tells them (the leader's decisions) then the danger is that responsibility for anything that goes wrong will also be seen as the leader's. That is covered in the chapter on “Communicate responsibility”. This book can be read as a whole, or dipped into chapter by chapter.
It is about how to think as a leader. It is full of anecdotes and illustrations that enable the reader to see the value of thinking in one way, and the problems that come with thinking in another. There are occasional references to other authors – to Jim Collin's Great to Good for example. The chapter on developing the right people starts from Collin's view that it is necessary to get the right people on the bus before setting off on the journey.
This is not an academic textbook – it reads more like an extended sermon. The extent to which the reader will be comfortable with this will depend in part on the extent to which your thinking is already attuned to Penny Ferguson's message. It communicates an ideal, but one which is achievable through personal development. The danger is, I suppose, that a highly value‐laden approach to leadership may induce a state of guilt in the reader. A bit like the problem of re‐cycling and carbon emissions, a presentation of the ideal easily sets up a disabling guilt on the part of those who know what the right thing to do is, but who equally know they are not doing it. This book is about individual development, and only at the end, almost as an afterthought, is there a chapter on culture – i.e. the collective. In fairness to Penny Ferguson her book is aimed at those who lead the organization and hence those who, as individuals, establish the culture. For those further down the hierarchy it may be more difficult to separate the individual from the collective.
Each chapter starts with a quote and a photo linked to the quotation. The chapter on leadership style starts with a quote from Dwight D. Eisenhower:
Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.
My favorite quote from the book is “doing what you have always done believing that you will get a different result is a definition of madness”, a much starker version of a message usually associated with neuro‐linguistic programming. The Living Reader is easy to read and a very good overview of a philosophy that equates with good practice for anyone in a leadership role.
