Patrick C. Flood

Encompassing interviews with managing directors and CEOs, this book explores the role of business outsiders as leaders. Viewing the term ‘outsider’ in a broad sense, the book considers leader background, perspective, gender, training and family membership and examines the implications, challenges and benefits brought by outsider leaders to their respective business environments. The authors explore questions and themes such as how outsider leaders can enrich an organisation, the importance of relationships and adopting a ‘hybrid’ approach, illuminated by interviewee perspectives. Introducing discussion and analysis through these narratives, Outsider Leadership distils commonalities to frame understanding of their experiences.

Opposing the notion that organisational change can be planned, predicted, or controlled, this timely book offers a critical perspective on change management. Johan Coetsee, Patrick Flood, Steven Kilroy and Teresa O'Hara portray change as a fluid phenomenon shaped by negotiation, tension, and the complex realities of power, politics, and institutions. Consolidating insights from leadership, stakeholder engagement, and ethics, the authors present a context-sensitive understanding of change. They frame leadership as a shared, relational process and critique the tendency to depend excessively on standard metrics, which can obscure vital issues such as trust, legitimacy, and inclusion. Chapters challenge traditional linear models in contemporary fast-paced working environments, defining change as a psychologically and emotionally complex process. They also provide an analytical overview of digital transformation, revealing related hidden issues including confusion over roles and ethical risks. Underscoring the importance of values-driven leadership, the book ultimately identifies how to integrate environmental, social, and governance factors into transformation strategies. Rethinking Change Management is an essential resource for scholars and students of business leadership, management and sustainability, and organisational change and leadership. Organisational development professionals and public and nonprofit sector practitioners will also benefit from its promotion of relational and adaptive approaches to transformation.

The communication aspect of leadership – to actively engage your followers and achieve understanding and motivation whilst making the message memorable – has never been more important. Using vivid lessons and examples from spheres outside business organization, The Persuasive Leader explores the leader's role as a communicator and teaches the fundamental principles of successful leadership. This book provides insights and principles about persuasive leadership from a broad range of human experiences. It draws on examples of persuasive leaders and persuasive leadership principles from the performing arts, the fine arts, literature, philosophical writings, and biography. The authors use their unconventional material to explore themes such as moral leadership, toxic leadership, learning from failures, 'distributed' leadership, leading for results and the leader as a mentor and counsellor. Leaders described in The Persuasive Leader: Abraham Lincoln, Jack Welch, Cleopatra, Teddy Roosevelt, Alexander the Great, Rachel Carson, Joshua Chamberlain, Governor John Winthrop, Barack Obamma, Steve Jobs, Henry V, Julius Caesar, John Quincy Adams, Dwight Eisenhower, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Huey Long, Napoleon, Ghandi, Sam Walton, Archbishop Sean O'Malley, Benjamin Franklin, Franklin Roosevelt, Jim Sinegal, Dolly Madison, James Jones, Clarence Darrow, William Harvey, Ronald Reagan, Fletcher Christian, Thomas Jefferson, Nelson Mandela, Charles McCormick, George Washington, Oprah Winfrey, Joan of Arc, John Kennedy, Herbert Hoover, Christopher Columbus, Anita Roddick, John DeLorean, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and others less well known persuasive leaders such as Anne Sullivan, TS Lin, Maria Galantry, Dorothy Collins, Scott Nash, Jane Hughes, William Barnes.