Rethinking Leadership

This thoroughly revised and extended second edition of the groundbreaking Rethinking Leadership builds on Donna Ladkin’s entirely new approach to understanding leadership as a lived experience rather than a checklist of traits or behaviors. Alongside selected expert contributors, the author makes complex ideas accessible by illustrating them with practical examples drawn from a broad experience of both academic leadership and management across a range of commercial, political and not-for-profit organizations.

New chapters explore the lived experience of women leaders, how leaders might make responsible judgments, how power works within leadership relations, how business leadership differs from political leadership, and the need for leaders to be more ‘human’. Featuring up-to-date examples of how its ideas can be applied, the book offers a way to engage with the complexity and unpredictability of leadership as a phenomenon, at a time when effective, wise leadership is needed more than ever.

Leadership scholars and doctoral level students will benefit from this book’s novel philosophical perspective on leadership theorizing. Its discussion of a variety of accessible case studies that illustrate key ideas will also prove useful to all postgraduate leadership students.