dispatches from the new world of work

Cool Friend: Lipman-Blumen

Jean Lipman-Blumen is a co-founding director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Leadership. She has a different approach to the leadership question than any we've seen here to date: WHAT TO AVOID.

Her recent book, discussed in our interview, is The Allure of Toxic Leaders: Why We Follow Destructive Bosses and Corrupt Politicians—and How We Can Survive Them. Another of her six books, The Connective Edge: Leading in an Interdependent World, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

Read the interview here.

Cathy Mosca posted this on 03/14/05.

Comments

This really speaks to the FREE AGENT NATION - TAKING fabulous care of self and family - surfing away from toxic - embracing freedoms and ownership.

Posted by John at March 14, 2005 5:32 PM

This linkbaton linking system makes me nuts. It hangs on me 95% of the time.

I always end up copying the bookname and pasting into amazon search fields.

Posted by Paul Davidson at March 15, 2005 2:17 AM

I haven't read the book yet, just the interview. The concern I have about the author's thesis is that one person's toxic leader is another's hero. Was Hitler a toxic leader? Sure, and almost everyone would agree. But I can see in my mind's eye a lot of people reading this book to see why other people follow a "toxic leader" like G. Bush. Is our president a toxic leader? Some would say yes and others no. These kind of theories lend themselves to broad interpretation very easily. And--I don't like the premise that "we" do things that are bad for ourselves because we just don't know any better and need someone like the author to point it out for us. Please, give me a break. I'll read the book, but I can't see my mind changing about this.

Posted by Mike at March 15, 2005 8:12 AM

I will buy the book, definitively; comments are very promising. I will recommend it also to some people.

Posted by Omara at March 19, 2005 7:03 AM