The Leader of the Future is the first volume published by the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Non‐profit Management, with promises of further volumes to come. It is a collection of 31 contributions on leadership ‐ what it is and what it will be in the future. The Preface states clearly who this book is for: “The leaders who ultimately will be successful in shaping the future are already scanning far beyond the horizon. This book is for them” (p. xvii). The contributors are drawn from scholars, practitioners and leaders of a wide range of organizations.
There are four parts to the book. Part 1, “Leading the organization of the future”, has eight chapters from such notables as Charles Handy, Edgar Schein, Peter Senge, Ken Blanchard and others. These deal with issues among which are the implications for leadership of a new language of organizations, the role of leadership in forming culture through different stages of an organization’s life cycle, and creating leaders throughout the organization.
Part 2, “Future leaders in action”, focuses on the lessons of leadership and features contributions from Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Frances Hesselbein, Richard Beckhard, John Heskett, James Kouses and Batty Posner among others.
Part 3, “ Learning to lead for tomorrow”, also has eight chapters. These deal with issues of role of the leader, career development, followership, and self‐leadership. The contributors include Stephen Covey and Douglas K. Smith.
The final section, Part 4, “ Executives on the future of leadership”, comprises eight executives from a wide range of organizations who share their experiences and reflections on what leadership is for them.
This is not a book to read from cover to cover. To do so would create a feeling of repetition. To get the best value from this book a reader would be better to dip into the chapters which attract in terms of title or author. The chapters are testimonies of the authors’ reflections on their experience of leadership and they should be read as such. Viewing the book as a whole, there is indeed repetition and consistency of themes. As this book is a collection of personal reflections, each contribution stands alone and makes its own contribution to the development of a view of leadership. Accordingly, there are no bibliographies or references. The average length of the chapters is eight pages.
If the book has a fault it is that it is weighted heavily towards the USA, a fault that is acknowledged by the editors, with a promise to readdress the balance in future volumes.
This is a useful book for executives to read while travelling or in short bursts of tranquillity. It is also a valuable compendium for students of organizations and leadership.
