Leadership for a Fractured World: How to Cross Boundaries, Build Bridges, and Lead Change - Softcover

Williams, Dean

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1626562652 ISBN 13: 9781626562653

Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2015

Synopsis

Leaders today—whether in corporations or associations, nonprofits or nations—face massive, messy, multidimensional problems. No one person or group can possibly solve them—they require the broadest possible cooperation. But, says Harvard scholar Dean Williams, our leadership models are still essentially tribal: individuals with formal authority leading in the interest of their own group. In this deeply needed new book, he outlines an approach that enables leaders to transcend internal and external boundaries and help people to collaborate, even people over whom they technically have no power.

Drawing on what he’s learned from years of working in countries and organizations around the world, Williams shows leaders how to approach the delicate and creative work of boundary spanning, whether those boundaries are cultural, organizational, political, geographic, religious, or structural. Sometimes leaders themselves have to be the ones who cross the boundaries between groups. Other times, a leader’s job is to build relational bridges between divided groups or even to completely break down the boundaries that block collaborative problem solving. By thinking about power and authority in a different way, leaders will become genuine change agents, able to heal wounds, resolve conflicts, and bring a fractured world together.

About this title

Book Description:

Harvard University faculty member Dean Williams draws on a decade of working with organizations around the world to show how leaders can cross the boundaries that divide us―vital in a world that it more interdependent than ever but still badly fractured by cultural, ideological, and political divisions.

About the Author:

Dean Williams leads the World Leaders Interview Project, chairs the Global Change Agent program, and teaches at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He is also the director of the Social Leadership Singapore program and served for six years as the chief adviser to the president of Madagascar. He has conducted research in India, Europe, Australia, Africa, Asia, South America, the Middle East, and the United States and is the author of Real Leadership: Helping People and Organizations Face Their Toughest Challenges.

About this edition

• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1626562652
• ISBN 13: 9781626562653
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 264