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This book seeks to explore leadership through study and interpretation of literature. It starts by stressing on the distinction between managerial roles, which are based on knowledge, techniques, skills and emphasis on results, and leadership roles that focuses on imagination, passion, commitment and fulfillment of dreams. Traditional management approaches, based on `scientific` analysis, do not contribute much towards understanding leadership. This book shows how leadership can be better understood by reading and interpreting masterpieces of world literature and relating them to leadership issues.
The book argues that understanding leadership is really about understanding life, and this starts with gaining an understanding of the self. The book starts with Cervantes` masterpiece Don Quixote, whose main character asserts `I know who I am` and believes in himself. This is followed by other works to highlight important issues: ambition and purpose in Chinua Achebe`s Things Fall Apart, faith versus reason in Bertolt Brecht`s The Life of Galileo, awakening the human spirit in Bernard Shaw`s Saint Joan, authenticity in Girish Karnad`s Tughlaq and the old Sanskrit play Mudrarakshasa by Visakhadatta, leaders and society in Arthur Miller`s All My Sons, role of illusions in Ibsen`s The Wild Duck, taking a stand in Ibsen`s A Doll`s House and the epic Mahabharata for development of perspective.
This book is based on the twenty-year experience of the authors, which they gained while teaching a course on leadership at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. The authors felt that a stage has been reached when their experience needed to be shared with a wider range of academicians and corporate leaders.
isbn-9780230328129
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Pages : 222
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