My first reaction to "Powerful Conversations" was positive, but as I read further into the book, I found more disturbing ideas. In particular, the book preaches the importance fostering trust, while also advocating manipulative strategies to keep strong-willed employees inline. If you are willing to put these issues aside, there are some valuable concepts to take away from the book.

When you talk, do people listen? Communicating effectively is essential in the business world. It is the first step in the path toward leadership. While other business books discuss leadership as a whole, this one focuses in on one of the most basic - and often overlooked - prerequisites to leadership: excellent communication skills. While most of the suggestions presented in Powerful Conversations seem like simple common sense, the book does get you to focus on critical points that you probably take for granted, like building trust, preparing in advance for potentially touchy conversations and actually listening to what other people say. In addition, it offers some helpful conversational strategies and pointers for determining when your meeting is heading south. We [...] recommend this book to executives in leadership positions, who will be reminded to brush up on their conversational style and delivery, and to business people and students looking to talk their way to the top.

This book provides the necessary tools for leadership and impactful conversations. It provides real-life technologies and tools for leaders at all levels of the organization. Inspiring and educational, this book should be on the shelf of all emerging and current leaders.

This book is for someone who had tried but failed to lead his people to excel. It could be very inspiring to those people if they have the wisdom to pick the good points from the book and create their own style, they would rate it 10(best). But if you had read the earlier (80's) books of Townsend "Further Up/Up the Organisation" (which I rated 10+), you would rate this one 1(worst).

The authors of this interesting work explore a new leadership style suited to the new characteristics of organization and the direction leadership is taking today. The ideas are presented as a lively dialogue between Bennis and Townsend; this format may appeal to some and turn-off others. While we found it added some pizzazz, at times it gets in the way of the content. The book covers such topics as: developing leadership traits, the personal side of leadership, empowerment, and choosing a leader. Also included is a self-development plan. The number of books on leader seems to be infinite but this is one that is informative and worthy of your time. Reviewed by Gerry Stern, founder, HR consultant.com InfoCenter and Stern & Associates.

Several insightful and practically applicable info, almost all from Townsend. Theoretical info provided by Bennis is of little use. Some useful advice includes: (1) how to select leaders and (2) protecting your group from unnecessary busy work from the top (3) delegate when someone can do the job 50-70% well and (4) promote from within

"Process improvement is the only known way to make real, long lasting changes in an organization that will increase its chances of survival and prosperity," writes Jim Shaw, consultant and examiner for the Malcolm Baldridge Quality Award. This book discusses the importance of looking at your business through the eyes of your customer, and sets out a series of steps for doing so.

With simple explanations, and well structured chapters, this book is a quick read (1-2 hours), but is elementary for anyone already involved in six sigma (or any other customer focused improvement effort.) If being "customer inspired" is something that you aspire to, but aren't entirely sure how to do it, this book gives an invaluable perspective.

After being disappointed by Cary Cherniss' book on "promoting" emotional intelligence, I was rather reluctant to spend money on this one, so I ordered a used copy through Amazon (very satisfactory: the copy I got was as good as new). I must say that I find my money well spent. In fact, the only reason why this book doesn't get 5 stars is that it's too scientific for practical application.

For instance, chapter 5 is correct to point out that most tests don't measure emotional intelligence, BUT emotional competence, and then goes on to warn us that a test as Bar-on's EQi test certainly has disadvantages, given it is a self-administered test (In my experience, self-administration of EQ-like tests is particularly dangerous for recruiting and other forms of evaluation). Of course, then the question becomes: BUT I want to test EQ in the context of work, how can I do this in a reliable fashion? You'll find the answer halfway chapter 6, which indicates that Behavior Event Interviews will do the trick (I agree with this, since that's what I experienced as well). Unfortunately, you won't find what kind of questions to ask during such an interview, let alone examples of how to do it.

Also, I was glad that the author of chapter 8 pointed out the same pitfalls of hiring senior executives I have been warning companies for. The suggestions that were outline come close to what we have been doing for several customers, but again the real, practical how to's are missing.

The chapters on training emotional intelligence in part three of the book were more useful than the book "Promoting E.I.", so there is no need at all to buy that other book anymore. Once again, these 4 chapters contain many of the messages one should have when working to develop EQ.

My critique: Except the scientific parts, I found that many of the more practical things this book covers, are "old messages" that can be found in works of Boyatzis, McClelland, Prochaska, Spencer and Spencer, ...

Conclusion? Buy this book if you need a solid scientific basis for your knowledge of emotional intelligence. As far as the how-to's are concerned, this book will serve very well as an outline and a checklist by which one can evaluate the quality of work delivered by a consultant - however, it's not enough to really go out there and "just do it". On the other hand, if you are a consultant recruiting or training for emotional intelligence, this is a MUST READ. Don't get caught not knowing what's in here!...

A CD-Rom jammed with articles from EXECUTIVE EXCELLENCE. I actually got my copy as a bonus for subscribing a couple of years ago. Many of the articles are interesting, but they are all quite short, almost MTV-ish. This seems to be the preferred style for this publication. If you are a fan of Warren Bennis, or one of the writers who regularly contribute to that publication, this is a good way to pick up some new material from your favored writer. The articles are on a variety of topics, which means that there will probably be something for everyone with an interest in this subject, but by the same token, there will be a lot that won't interest you. The CD includes a search engine that is workable. I benefitted from the magazine and the CD, but they didn't set my world on fire.

While I don't agree with all of Bennis' role models, he makes some very valid points about achievement, leadership, and human relationships. Like John Maxwell and others who have paid their dues, he mentions the importance of learning from failure. One of the many useful quotes Bennis provides is "it is not enough for a leader to do things right, he must do the right thing." Also like other writers in this genre, he says one of the fundamentals of leadership is to have a guiding vision. As a communicator, Bennis encourages potential leaders to codify their thoughts through writing. Writing eliminates ambiguity and helps one to focus. Leadership is viewed as a process in the sense that goal-accomplishment involves several incremental phases. He writes "the goal isn't worth arriving at unless you enjoy the journey." A process of self-reflection is outlined and discussed in the middle section of the book. This is followed by some advice on how to investigate the world at large. Travel, reading, and involvement are three keys to learning the environment in which one is to contribute. Bennis has some ideas worthy of followup. His book is worth reading.

I found the book a rehash of 1980's thinking by a university professor. Japan good. US bad. Unions good, Marx good, business people bad - what a waste of money.

Initially I was intrigued by the title of this book - what has 'cat-herding' to do with managing people? Bennis' statement that 'cats can't be herded, but they can be led' makes sense in a quirky way. Much like cats, people are quite resistant to any sort of rules or change that are being forced upon them; they react much better if they are gently led. I think one of the biggest challenges that we all face is leadership - defining leadership, and then defining ourselves within that definition. Managing and leading are not the same thing, and it's the leaders rather than the managers who will be truly successful throughout the next decade, and beyond.
Bennis states that there is a 'leadership crisis' in the United States, and offers four contributing factors. The first is the 'growing disparity between the rich and the poor'. I wholeheartedly agree - nothing erodes trust in our leadership than seeing CEOs making millions, while John Q. Public has been downsized out of a job, and no longer has health insurance for his kids.
The second factor is what Bennis calls the 'inverted trust factor'. This has to do with trust in government, and how that trust has eroded. This book was published in 1999; we've all seen the brief surge in trust that followed the September 11th tragedy; however, as Osama bin Laden continues to elude us, I feel that trust in our government is on the downswing again.
The third factor Bennis calls the 'abandoned other half', those who have been laid off and downsized. With a growing population and a shrinking job market, what chance do American workers have of finding a decent job with good wages and benefits?
The last contributor to the 'crisis' is the lack of empowerment felt by American workers. Bennis states "Empowerment and restructuring are on a collision course". As America downsizes, those who do remain employed don't have a warm, fuzzy feeling that they will remain employed for long. Pervasive fear of losing one's job doesn't bode well for creativity or initiative.
BUT.....Bennis offers hope. He feels that if we can become LEADERS, rather than managers, we have a shot at heading off the crisis that he sees coming. He offers some thoughts on the competencies and traits of leaders, which, on first read, seem like basic common sense. However, many of us may not take the time to stop and think about ways to actually BE a leader, and so instill and inspire leadership in others. In a nutshell, Bennis believes that true leaders have a vision, a set of intentions, which sets the direction and leads to a goal.
I personally enjoyed this book. While much of it is common sense, it is presented in such a way as to make you think twice, and to make you wonder how it applies to you and your own occupation, be it CEO or first level manager

Apparently another reviewer agrees with Ecclesiastes that there is nothing new under the sun and I agree with both of them. There is nothing new in this book nor does Bennis make that claim. He has observed that this book offers his last and best comments on the subject of leadership. In it, he has assembled his best ideas from a number of previous books he authored or co-authored. Let us all hope that this is not his final contribution to the subject.

Bennis begins with an especially apt quotation of T.S. Eliot's comments on his cat The Rum Tum Tugger: "For he will do as he will do, and there's no doing anything about it. When you let him in, then he wants out; he's always in the wrong side of the door." As an owner of countless cats myself for more than 20 years, I can personally affirm that Eliot's cat is normal. It really makes no difference what you name a cat nor what you say to it. The best advice I can offer is to remember that a dog's idea of God is a human being but that a cat's idea of God is a cat. For thousands of years, the human race has deified certain rulers (e.g. Caesars), many of whom (like cats) saw themselves as deities. Until recently, many corporate CEOs embraced the "command and control" leadership style. Several of them are on record as viewing themselves as omniscient and omnipotent, victims of what I characterize as "The Ozmanias Syndrome" which is inevitably fatal for them and often for their spheres of influence as well.

Back to Bennis and this book. To those who aspire to lead people, here's his advice: "Be humble. Stop trying to 'herd cats' and start building trust and mutual respect. Your 'cats' will respond. They will sense your purpose, keep your business purring, and even kill your rats." Bennis' clever use of similes and metaphors aside, I rate this volume so highly for three reasons. First, it offers what is probably the most personal glimpse we are likely to have of Bennis, very much in the same spirit as Stephen King's On Writing. Also, Bennis is deeply concerned about an ever-worsening "leadership crisis" of global proportions. He explains why others should share that concern. Finally, as noted earlier, he assembles in this volume his most important insights and observations on the subject of leadership. For that last reason, I am most grateful (much as I enjoyed the pleasure of his personal company) because those insights and observations suggest HOW to respond to the aforementioned "leadership crisis."

Bennis organizes his material with two Sections (The Leadership Crisis and What Makes a Leader?) and an Epilogue (Reflections on Retirement). Drawing upon personal experiences which extend back to his childhood, Bennis explains why he views self-invention as an exercise of the imagination: "That's basically how we get to know ourselves. People who can't invent and then reinvent themselves must be content with borrowed postures, secondhand ideas, fitting in instead of standing out. Inventing oneself is the opposite of accepting the roles we were brought up to play." This is an affirmation with profound implications. Those who possess sufficient courage, determination, and (yes) endurance to gain self-knowledge will eventually achieve beneficial change. So long as this immensely difficult process continues, periodic reinvention is inevitable.

Meanwhile, paradoxically, Bennis suggests that there are certain human values which must remain constant throughout that process. They include integrity, dedication, magnanimity, humility, openness, and creativity. Values-driven leaders, while increasing their self-knowledge, must possess non-negotiable standards of moral and intellectual honesty. They must have a passionate belief in something. They must be "noble of mind and heart; generous in forgiving; above revenge and resentment." As Bennis observes, "Magnanimous and humble people are notable for their self-possession. They know who they are, have healthy egos, and take more pride in what they do than in who they are." They must be willing to try what is new and be receptive to new ideas, however bizarre, with "a tolerance for ambiguity and change, and a rejection of any and all preconceived prejudices, biases, and stereotypes." With regard to creativity, Bennis asserts that "we must restore our sense of wonder, break through our own preconceptions and see everything new and fresh -- as we did when we were children." In sum, leaders have both vision and virtue.

In his Epilogue, during which he reflects on the subject of retirement, Bennis shares two basic ideas. First, that all of his own personal heroes "were always in transition. They were always redesigning, recomposing and reinventing their own lives. Also, "that people who have been successful in their careers and in life are also successful in all transitions." This book is really not about "herding cats"; rather, it is about principled self-governance. It is also about values-driven leadership as (in effect) a "work in progress" throughout transitions in life. Now more than ever before, our world desperately needs leaders whose vision will inspire us and whose virtue will guide us during our own quest for self-knowledge from one transition to the next.

First of all, it seems unlikely to me that there are too many people left that don't recognize the importance of multidisciplinary teamwork in pursuing truly important, breakthrough work.

However, even though the notion is fairly widespread it would STILL be useful to have a guide to implementing such a strategy in one's own organization. Unfortunately, Bennis and Biederman blew a good chance to do this and I was extremely disappointed by their book.

The book creates a very misleading approach to collaborative teams by concentrating exclusively on the sort of "work all night until you drop dead because nothing in the world means as much to you as this project" sort of mindset. Frankly, I don't want people like that anywhere near me. But having led and participated in many successful multidisciplinary design teams I can frankly attest that this kind of mindset is not only totally superfluous - it is also ultimately destructive.

Yes, you can have a life AND be on a successful collaborative team. You don't have to be an eccentric nut and/or a workaholic. Too bad the authors created such a misleading representation of what promises to be a very important approach to work in the next century.

If you were to look up the word "leadership" in any reputable dictionary, it would probably suggest that you contact Warren Bennis. No one has written more and more enlightening commentary on the subject of leadership than has he. In Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration, he and Patricia Ward Biederman examine a number of what the authors call "Great Groups." Perhaps the most important point is introduced in the first chapter: "None of us is as smart as all of us."

That is to say, the "Great Man" theory is invalidated by the achievements of truly creative teams such as those at the Disney studios which produced so many animation classics; at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) which developed the first personal computer; at Apple Computer which then took it to market; in the so-called "War Room" which helped to elect Bill Clinton President in 1992; at the so-called "Skunk Works" where so many of Lockheed's greatest designs were formulated; at Black Mountain College which "wasn't simply a place where creative collaboration took place. It was about creative collaboration"; and at Los Alamos (NM) and the University of Chicago where the Manhattan Project eventually produced a new weapon called "the Gadget."

Bennis and Biederman conclude Organizing Genius by providing 15 "Take-Home Lessons." Each is directly relevant to any organization which aspires to accomplish what Steve Jobs once described as being "insanely great."

With all due respect to the command-and-control skills of great leaders in the past (including most of those enshrined in the "Business Hall of Fame"), such skills simply are not effective today. "None of us is as smart as all of us." A group can become "great" only if and when it possesses both genius in each member and the leadership necessary to achieve creative collaboration by those members. With rare exception, "Genius" in isolation simply cannot accomplish what "genius" in creative collaboration can.

This absorbing work explores the marriage between able leadership and the organization of gifted people that, combined, produces extraordinary results. The authors examine seven such groups including the Skunk Works, the Manhattan Project, Disney Feature Animation Unit, and President Clinton's 1992 campaign team. The book concludes with fifteen lessons of great groups. Extensive notes are provided.

The authors clearly reveal the complex SYNERGY between leadership and organization that creates high-performance teams, but one has to also consider the influence environmental circumstances-threats and opportunities. Abounds with excellent insights. Reviewed by Gerry Stern, founder, HR consultant.com InfoCenter and Stern & Associates.

While I agree that the media has its share of problems and is advertising driven and needs to be carefully analyzed, the arguments these two authors use are completely blown out of proportion. Everyone knows that you can't believe what you see on TV. As for the advertisements that permeate their way into programs - I don't see why the authors don't realize television wouldn't survive without clever advertising to keep the cash rolling in. As long as you can differentiate between reality and TV, you're fine, and this book will shed no new light on anything for you.

Ian Mitroff and Warren Bennis are two academics heavily involved in the technological revolution. Their purpose in writing this book is to examine how technology, in what they call the "systems age," has created an all-consuming cocoon of unreality in our daily lives. They are not bashing technology, but examining how a lack of ethics has allowed technology to threaten the very nature of our system of government and of our lives. There are plenty of books available on media studies: Todd Gitlin, Jerry Mander, Neil Postman, and others; what makes this book different, at least in the eyes of the authors, is that it studies the underlying causes of the effects of television and mass media. This underlying effect is the creation of unreality, or a system that is so all consuming that it blocks out the real world.

The problem with an omnipresent unreality is that the real reality has not gone away. One of the reasons we create an unreality is that the real world is far too complex to understand. In the modern world, the interdependence of every aspect of global life has led to a complexity that is simply astonishing to behold. Not one human being on the face of the Earth can make heads or tails of events anymore. The result is fear on the part of humans, which leads to the creation of an alternate, unreal world where answers are easy and presented in a somewhat non-threatening way (I'm not sure this is right; the media loves to start panics). This alternate world has become so pervasive that it has become an actual industry, generating celebrities and images that people can relate to.

How celebrity is created and marketed is probably the best part of the book. The authors use charts and graphs to show how this process has become a huge industry employing thousands and thousands of people. The book also shows how the masses react to this celebrity, which in extreme cases, leads to the likes of Jonestown and Mark David Chapman. Celebrityhood is revealed to be a process of engineering; people are "remade" to fit personalities and molds demanded by the public (or is it really demanded by the public? Perhaps the demand is created.).

Other sections show how media uses archetypes from the human psyche to create shows, how heroes are generated in a society that lacks, or at least ignores, real heroes, and boundary warping, or how reality and unreality is actually defined.

This is a good book, although it is somewhat dated. Even the 1993 update makes this book pre-Internet, a new technology that would no doubt interest the authors. One of the charts uses characters from "Dynasty" as examples, and the reliance on Sigmund Freud shows that the authors are not aware that most psychologists view Freud as a quack. I think this is a necessary read, at least for those who are interested in media studies and the like. It does tend to get a little esoteric at times, which is not surprising as the two authors are engineers who are probably not used to writing directly to the masses. Recommended.

I was literally blown away by this remarkable book and its well-argued and carefully documented thesis regarding the ways in which contemporary Americans are victimized and manipulated into a kind of strange, conjured, and artificial perspective of the world around them through the rise and active ministrations of the "unreality industry". Here is an eye-opening expose on the specific ways in which we are being influenced, entertained, and carefully manipulated even as we strive to learn more about the world around us. Reading this remarkable book helped me to better understand the ways in which the rise of the electronic media to a position of prominence (if not complete domination) of the promulgation, interpretation, and dissemination of information has profoundly changed the way we have come to view, interpret and understand the world around us.

The authors carefully describe, articulate and identify those characteristics of the media that cause many of us such vague unease regarding the way the media increasingly seems to focus on provocative, entertaining and diverting news stories which often are of only tangential import to us as citizens or individuals. We're subjected to obligatory overdoses on petty, arcane and distracting stores about Michael Jackson, OJ Simpson, Susan Smith, Bill Clinton's cigar fetishes, and the vagaries of the stock market, while vital and critical issues of importance and relevance to us as individuals or as citizens are systematically ignored. According to Mitroff and Bennis, everything about the way the news programs are organized and presented leads us to increasingly view the news more as a vehicle for entertainment than as a method of informing ourselves to be involved citizens, so we come to expect ever-greater levels of stimulation and excitement by virtue of this stylized approach to what is important enough to report and present over the airwaves. Slowly we come to forget the critical differences between entertainment and information.

For the authors, as for an increasingly alarmed number of academics and social critics, the basic dialectic at hand revolves between objective and discernable "reality", on the on hand, and this artificially-generated, diverting, entertaining, but basically incorrect version of it called "unreality", a dialectic which more and more favors the organized collective forces of the media, who present such entertaining and stylized notions of what is relevant, cogent and important for us to pay attention to is not necessarily as accurate or as objectively disinterested as it may seem to be on the surface. We would do well to remember that the outcome of this struggle to correctly understand the world and how it operates is of desperate importance, and our eagerness to be entertained and diverted from the most egregious and disagreeable aspects of the modern environment must not allowed to become an addiction to fantasy, growing ignorance, and critical stupidity.

This book came up repeatedly under various search engines for "leadership." I would say it is probably a far more valuable resource for private-sector business folks. The book misses the mark on "leadership" analysis, but could probably be a McDonald's drive-thru success for the business world. I am not a student of business, but it appeared to wildly over-simplify a complex topic. I noted the author's doomsday-ish tone, particularly in sentences such as: "The choice is clear; Reengineer and flourish, or fail to reengineer and perish." The book was not one of the resources in the "leadership" arena that appealed to me.

The book gives a simple, hands-on overview about basic steps of one of the many so-much-talked-about management methods - Business Reengineering. The book uses outline method in describing the main steps to be taken in reengineering process. Therefore it may sometimes lack detailed reasoning of the background. However, with the help of handful of examples and illustrations, Bennis and Mische succeeded quite well in bringing such a complicated subject to wider public. In my view, it would be most useful for CEO-s who are under the time stress for it may be read through in just a couple of hours. I strongly recommend!