Use the creative energy of metaphor to clarify and make your leadership vision a reality! How do you see yourself as an educator? How would you describe yourself as a leader? Have you ever considered using metaphors to reframe your leadership practice, vision, and mission? Often, leaders stumble when asked to articulate their values, ethics, and purpose. This book illustrates the significance of leadership archetypes and metaphoric reframing in understanding and facilitating organizational change. Leadership, Myth, & Metaphor reports on the findings of a professional development study-funded by the Gates Foundation-of more than 250 superintendents and principals, celebrating educatorsa? unique individual core values while acknowledging their shared intrinsic beliefs, including: A commitment to a cause beyond oneself A devotion to an ethic of care A desire to improve the condition of society A wish to make a significant impression on student and adult lives A conviction to inspire others to seek their full potential Awareness of yourself on a personal and professional level leads to a deeper consideration of your mission as a leader and of your purpose in life.

Can we really run organizations without leaders? Yes, says organizational consultant Jeffery Nielson in this provocative book. According to Nielsen, it’s time to stop structuring businesses as “rank-based” organizations run by a privileged elite who are so isolated from the front lines that they are downright counterproductive. Debunking the leadership myth, Nielsen calls for an end to leader-based corporate hierarchies, which foster secrecy, encourage miscommunication, and steal the joy and dignity from work. His new paradigm is the “peer-based” organization. No matter how you feel about Nielsen’s theory of leaderless organizations, you are sure to find this book thought provoking. It will challenge your assumptions about the role of leadership in modern organizations.

Since its first publication over twenty years ago, Images of Organization has become a classic in the canon of management literature. The book is based on a very simple premise—that all theories of organization and management are based on implicit images or metaphors that stretch our imagination in a way that can create powerful insights, but at the risk of distortion. Gareth Morgan provides a rich and comprehensive resource for exploring the complexity of modern organizations internationally, translating leading-edge theory into leading-edge practice.

This book torches seven leadership myths: 1) Leadership entails taking charge of people. 2) Leaders are transformational, managers transactional. 3) Leadership is a set of skills that anybody can develop. 4) Leaders require emotional intelligence and integrity. 5) Managers should be replaced by leaders. 6) Leadership entails working relationships with followers. 7) Great leaders soothe our anxieties... For revolutionary implications: Leadership blasts the status quo to promote new directions. It does NOT manage people. Management is reborn as an inspiring, empowering force to get things done through people... and practical benefits: executives gain focus. All employees show leadership, bottom-up, for faster innovation plus better engagement and retention.

A dramatic, thought-provoking portrait of one of the most compelling figures in early Christianity which explores two thousand years of history, art, and literature to provide a close-up look at Mary Magdalen and her significance in religious and cultural thought.

In a fascinating analysis of the great psychological and sociological thinkers—including Freud, Maslow, McClelland, Durkheim, Skinner, Lewin and Mead—this erudite text challenges the models, myths and metaphors of modern psychology. Psychologists have promoted the view that human beings are the victims of internal and external forces, and have laboured to absorb free and responsible individuals into a pseudo-scientific framework that denies moral agency and thus renders them incapable of recognising notions of right and wrong. This book will appeal to anyone who has read enough psychology to have been perplexed and frustrated by its famous emperors. It demonstrates that if we take these naked emperors seriously and deny human freedom and personal responsibility, we shall have contributed to the undermining of our civilisation. With skill and verve, the book carries readers through an array of ideas to a ‘purposive psychology’ that enables individuals to gain insight into, and mastery of, themselves.

The third volume in a series of three focuses on myth in everyday organizational life. The mythical narratives presented in this volume serve as metaphors of an organizational issue that can take inspiration from or be better understood through the myth to reveal an archetypal dimension of organizing and organizations.