For an aspiring principal, being able to see how to balance a school leader's roles seems very difficult. Administrators are expected to perform daily managerial tasks efficiently while at the same time provide a dynamic vision and school culture. Through reality-based cases, Deal and Peterson show that creative endeavors can allow principals to balance their seemingly dualistic roles. The Leadership Paradox offers insight into how to balance the technical and symbolic sides of the school leadership role. After reading this book, principals will be better equipped with some cognitive templates and action repertoires that will help them respond effectively to issues as both a technician and artist.

Deal and Peterson are on to a--paradoxically--simple and yet equally profound truth: leadership is a paradoxical enterprise. The heart of their analysis focuses on the false dichotomy between (left-brained) rational-technical-logical "management" and (right-brained) symbolic-artistic-passionate "leadership." As their title suggests, they wisely conclude that the most effective school leaders practice a more balanced "bifocal" approach.

Most of us probably tend naturally to prefer one of these approaches over the other. We are thus likely to recognize both ourselves and our nemeses described in the authors' discussions of the respective strengths and weaknesses inherent in these two contrasting styles. Their answer, predictably, is to encourage us to cleave to a more paradoxically-sensitive middle way, or "via media." I tend to agree.

If you happen to see life as rife with paradox and ambiguity already anyway, you are unlikely to learn anything earth-shakingly new from Deal and Peterson's account in this book. But I don't want this review to sound too ambivalent. Paradoxically, perhaps, I found this to be a thoroughly worthwhile work to read--despite its (un)remarkably (extra)ordinary thesis.