Title: Inner Leadership - Realize Your Self-Leading Potential
Author: Simon Smith
Publisher: Nicolas Brealey Publishing
Price: £12.99
Year: April 2000
ISBN: 1-85788271-7
Format: 224pp 234x189mm
Nicolas Brealey Publishing is famous for its accessible and useful publications. The question is whether Simon Smith’s attempt to fuse management and psychological theories manages to live up to this reputation?
The book is a manual to work through to develop your own inner leadership. Essential parts of the book are the twenty case studies and twenty-nine exercises for the reader to work through. The aims of the book are to develop self-awareness thereby developing personal growth and improving personal relationships. It should also help the reader to develop as a mentor and also to resolve conflict.
It is based on a four-stage process:
- Recognising
- Exploring
- Actualizing
- Leading
Smith suggests that to develop inner leadership we first come to recognise ourselves (in particular our emotions) and also our qualities. This in turn allows us to explore our mental make-up, in the form of our mindsets, values and our constituent parts. The realisation that it is by accepting our mental makeup rather than trying to deny some part of it allows us to know our purpose. It is this knowledge that enables the embracing of change and ability to move towards our goals. This self-awareness and ease with oneself is how the inner leader develops, and is therefore able to develop others.
The ideas in the book are clearly presented, and certainly I found working through the book had an impact on my view of both myself and those around me. It is possible that I have fallen into the trap that Smith describes as self-inflation. I have to fight off an urge to recommend this book to every one I meet. My only warning is that to undertake some of the exercises you must be brutally honest, and that at times it may take some time to come to terms with what you discover.
Inner Leadership - Realize Your Self-Leading Potential was reviewed by Patric Devitt of Psynergy Consulting.
