Leaders: Myth and Reality

What is leadership? John Maxwell’s definition is the most common answer: “Leadership is influence.” That’s true to an extent, but it’s also too simple because it’s leader-centric, as if influence flowed only one way. In their new book, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Jeff Eggers, and Jason Mangone identify three myths people believe about leaders and offer a more complex definition of leadership. Somewhat ironically for a book that criticizes leader-centricity, Leaders reaches its conclusions by examining the lives of thirteen leaders.First up is Robert E. Lee, the “Marble Man” of the Confederacy, who profoundly illustrates the distance between the myths and realities of leadership. Lee was admired by many white Americans for his martial valor and personal virtue. That admiration was given even though Lee lost the Civil War and miserably failed the greatest moral test of the nineteenth century by defending a way of life built on white supremacy and black slavery. His leadership consisted in what he symbolized, then, not in what achieved — or rather, thankfully failed to achieve..Then come several chapters in which McChrystal and his coauthors pair leaders under six headings: Founders (Walt Disney and Coco Chanel), Geniuses (Albert Einstein and Leonard Bernstein), Zealots (Maximilien Robespierre and Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi), Heroes (Zheng He and Harriet Tubman), Power Brokers (Boss Tweed and Margaret Thatcher), and Reformers (Martin Luther and Martin Luther King Jr.). These leaders often exercised influence despite their personal flaws (e.g., Boss Tweed) or the immorality of their causes (e.g., Zarqawi). Their profiles remind readers that leaders are flesh-and-blood people, not statues on pedestals.Taken both singly and in pairs, these profiles make Leaders a fascinating book, biographically informative but also analytically shrewd. As you read each short “life,” you come to realize that leaders exercise an important role, but not in the way that a simplistic definition portrays. Too simple an understanding of leadership results in myths about leadership, which McChrystal, Eggers, and Mangone describe this way:• The Formulaic Myth: In our attempt to understand process, we strive to tame leadership into a static checklist, ignoring the reality that leadership is intensely contextual, and always dependent upon particular circumstances.• The Attribution Myth: We attribute too much to leaders, having a biased form of tunnel vision focused on leaders themselves, and neglecting the agency of the group that surrounds them. We’re led to believe that leadership is what the leader does, but in reality, outcomes are attributable to far more than the individual leader.• The Results Myth: We say that leadership is the process of driving groups of people toward outcomes. That’s true, to a point, but it’s much broader than that. In reality, leadership describes what leaders symbolize more than what they achieve. Productive leadership requires that followers find a sense of purpose and meaning in what their leaders represent, such as social identity or some future opportunity.The key concepts to take away from the authors’ description of these myths are the importance of context, relationship, and symbolism in leadership. According to the authors, when those concepts are taken into account, leadership can be defined as “a complex system of relationships between leaders and followers, in a particular context, that provides meaning to its members.” This implies that leaders exercise a twofold role as “a bottom-up servant to enable action and a top-down symbol to motivate and provide for meaning.”I write this review as a Pentecostal minister and editor of a Christian leadership magazine — intentionally named Influence, by the way. Though Leaders is a secular leadership book, it teaches several valuable lessons that can benefit pastors and other church leaders. I’ll close with four that came repeatedly to mind as I read the book:First, as pastors and leaders in your church, there is no fool-proof, multi-step formula for becoming or producing other leaders. You should have a leadership pipeline and provide leadership training for your staff and volunteers, but you should also keep your eyes open for influencers who arise through other means. Paul’s leadership pipeline was the Damascus Road, after all, not the Jerusalem church.Second, share the work of ministry with others. Too often, we speak of what Pastor So-and-so accomplished at Such-and-such Church, as if he or she accomplished everything alone. But as Paul put it, the congregation is a body in which every member must do its part. So, share the work and spread the credit around.Third, tend to your soul. Jesus said, “Follow me.” Paul wrote, “Imitate me as I imitate Christ.” People will follow your leadership if you personally embody the joy and life-changing power of the gospel. Who you are as a leader is as important as what you do, in other words, because who you are as a spiritual leader symbolizes the life of meaning and eternal significance that people aspire to in Christ.Fourth, and finally, use your leadership for good. Both Robert E. Lee and Martin Luther King Jr. were Christians. And yet, at the height of their leadership, separated by a century, they exerted influence to achieve morally contradictory goals — Lee in defense of white supremacy and King in defense of racial equality. At the end of the day, however one defines leadership, shouldn’t doing the right thing be the most basic test of our leadership?

Best description of Leadership I have read. Brings some understanding of a complex subject. He brings clarity in his writing.

I’ve been waiting 40 years for this book. I read James MacGregor Burns book Leadership when it came out in 1978. It was a fascinating and thought-provoking book, but there were several things I didn’t like.Leadership was primarily about political leaders. Political leaders are important. But most of the leadership I’ve experienced in my life was by Marines and businesspeople. I thought Burns’ book was too leader-focused. In my experience, the performance of the people around a leader and the situation had a lot to do with whether a leader was successful. Burns identified leadership as a moral function in the sense of “It’s not leadership unless it’s for a moral good.” My view then and now is that leadership is value-neutral. There are effective leaders who are evil and effective leaders who are not. There are effective leaders that pursue noble ends and others who pursue power for its own sake.Leaders: Myth and Reality by Stanley McChrystal, Jeff Eggers, and Jay Mangone, is a very different book. It’s about leaders, not leadership. Starting from what leaders do yields a more clear-eyed view of leadership.The structure is inspired by Plutarch’s classic, The Lives of The Noble Greeks And Romans. Like Plutarch, McChrystal and his co-authors considered leaders in pairs.  Plutarch analyzed different leaders to determine their character. The authors of Leaders pair leaders to study the act of leadership itself.The authors treat Robert E. Lee differently from other leaders in the book.  Lee isn't paired with another leader. He stands alone as McChrystal's early example of great leadership. Leaders studies leaders who were founders, geniuses, zealots, heroes, power brokers, and reformers.Each chapter includes a list of key books for further reading, profiles of two leaders, and analysis of how they led. The authors emphasize the leader as part of a social system, the influence of the situation, and the influence of “followers.”Two chapters and an epilogue follow the chapters on leaders. One chapter describes the three myths of leadership and analyzes them. The final chapter is about redefining leadership. Read this book straight through.You may be like my friend Art, who habitually reads the final chapters of a book before working his way through it. Don’t do that with this book. You’ll get more from this book if you follow the trail of examples before you get to the reasoning. I found that I would read a pair of the profiles and analysis and then need time to reflect on what I had read. You may find the same thing.Bottom LineLeaders: Myth and Reality is an excellent book about how leaders practice leadership. It identifies and challenges many common beliefs about leadership and suggests new ways to think about leadership and to prepare and evaluate people for leadership roles. It is the best analysis and overview of leaders and leadership I have ever read.

I really enjoyed this book, it dives into various different leaders and influential people, goes through a fair amount of stories and examples of each, and a ton of historical information. I enjoyed some so much that I’m reading more about some of the people in this book.Overall, I recommend it for people who enjoy perspective, history, and good stories.

General McChrystal does it again with an amazing book on leadership. Highly recommend to all military leaders, CEOs, managers, etc….you can really learn a lot from one of the military’s strongest leaders in history.

Thanks great book fast delivery

Includes theoretical frameworks about leadership in an accessible way. Watch the ted talk aside 📚 reading this book. I don't usually read books about military but GSM approaches through a different lense. Enjoyable read!

This honest and humble perspective of leadership, explains that leadership is not formulaic. It doesn't prescribe any approach to leadership but it exposes in great detail how leadership looked from multiple perspectives. It starts slow but is difficult to put down. I found this book greatly enriching. Thank you Stanley.

Hard to read

Christmas present

Leaders written by a veritable General and two co-authors is a compilation of biographies of historic characters of different nationalities and times. Divided into seven chapters with headlines „The Founders“, “The Geniuses”, “The Zeolots” or “The Heros” General Stanley McChrystal has selected 2 representatives each, who according to McChrystal do qualify as good examples for this category of leaders. The Founders for example are Walt Disney and Coco Chanel, the chapter “The Geniuses” not surprisingly comes up with Albert Einstein and Leonard Bernstein. Examples for heroic leaders are the Chinese Admiral Zheng He and Harriet Tubman. McChrystal models his book after the antic historian Plutarch’s classic Lives, in which this author then profiled over forty famous personalities and which book could be found in all American homes a century ago, according to McChrystal. The book closes with a short conclusion of what leadership is about and what not and that’s it. Among the biographies I found the life of Margaret Thatcher most interesting but nothing more