Leadership On The Line Summary

Leadership on the Line
Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky’s “Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading” describes the risks that every leader experiences at one point or another. It explains how no matter what level of leadership you’re in, whether it be leading a small organization or a nation, each leader has internal and external conflicts that they must overcome in order to “stay alive” as a leader. Heifetz and Linsky go through the dangers of leadership by separating the book into three distinct parts. The authors discuss in the first part why leadership is dangerous and how people manage to cave in to the pressure involved with leading. In the second part of the book, there are ideas for reducing the risk of failure
It is the person’s actions that make them a leader and not actually their traits. As the book states, it is in our human nature to have certain “hungers” that will eventually bring forth our downfall, however it is our actions as a leader that allow us to overcome these “hungers” in order to stay alive through the dangers of leading. An example of this would be the hunger for power and control. In most cases being able to take control of a situation or crisis in the organization is a positive thing; however it is
Its strength includes giving well thought out examples of both positive and negative leadership in everyday life. This allows the reader to be fully capable of comprehending the topic being discussed. An example of positive leadership is seen while it is discussing the risk of “going beyond your authority”, the author manages to incorporate David Grossman’s story about how he went beyond his authority when progress required it. As Grossman said “If you don’t occasionally exceed your formal authority, you are not pushing the envelope,” (Heifetz 23) sometimes risks are necessary in order to ensure success. The downside of having so many examples is that it can eventually become a bit overwhelming to keep track of every situation that is described because often the authors bring back previous stories later in the book. While it does do an excellent job of explaining different situations where leadership involves taking risks and the dangers that are also involved, it does slowly transcend into a rambling self-help type of book where I feel it begins straying from its original purpose. Although the book may use ideas that to most would be common sense to use in