Few things are more important than the quality and credibility of leaders, as they play a vital role in every aspect of our modern lives. Yet strong leadership is a difficult skill to master. Good leaders must learn not only to manage, analyse and appraise, but also to encourage, improve and inspire. Here, John Adair, the celebrated expert on leadership training, shows how Confucian philosophy can help you become a better leader. He demonstrates how, far from merely being interesting ideas from centuries ago, Confucius's sayings, or Analects, will help you to develop the confidence, characteristics and skills you need to be the best leader you can be.

Political leadership has made a comeback. It was studied intensively not only by political scientists but also by political sociologists and psychologists, Sovietologists, political anthropologists, and by scholars in comparative and development studies from the 1940s to the 1970s. Thereafter, the field lost its way with the rise of structuralism, neo-institutionalism, and rational choice approaches to the study of politics, government, and governance. Recently, however, students of politics have returned to studying the role of individual leaders and the exercise of leadership to explain political outcomes. The list of topics is nigh endless: elections, conflict management, public policy, government popularity, development, governance networks, and regional integration. In the media age, leaders are presented and stage-managed--spun--DDLas the solution to almost every social problem. Through the mass media and the Internet, citizens and professional observers follow the rise, impact, and fall of senior political officeholders at closer quarters than ever before. This Handbook encapsulates the resurgence by asking, where are we today? It orders the multidisciplinary field by identifying the distinct and distinctive contributions of the disciplines. It meets the urgent need to take stock. It brings together scholars from around the world, encouraging a comparative perspective, to provide a comprehensive coverage of all the major disciplines, methods, and regions. It showcases both the normative and empirical traditions in political leadership studies, and juxtaposes behavioural, institutional, and interpretive approaches. It covers formal, office-based as well as informal, emergent political leadership, and in both democratic and undemocratic polities.

Drawing on the lives of some of the greatest political, intellectual and religious leaders of modern times, and the author’s personal experience, Virtuous Leadership demonstrates that leadership and virtue are not only compatible, they are actually synonymous. Virtuous Leadership defines each of the classical human virtues most essential to leadership – magnanimity, humility, prudence, courage, self-control and justice. It demonstrates how these virtues promote personal transformation and the attainment of self-fulfillment. It also considers the Christian supernatural virtues of faith, hope and charity without which no study of leadership can be complete. The book’s final section, Towards Victory, offers a methodology for the achievement of interior growth tailored to the needs of busy, professional people intent on imbuing their lives with a transcendent purpose. Thus, the aim of Virtuous Leadership is ultimately practical. It is meant to be your guidebook in the quest for excellence.

This volume shows the influence of the Sage's teachings over the course of Chinese history--on state ideology, the civil service examination system, imperial government, the family, and social relations--and the fate of Confucianism in China in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as China developed alongside a modernizing West and Japan. Some Chinese intellectuals attempted to reform the Confucian tradition to address new needs; others argued for jettisoning it altogether in favor of Western ideas and technology; still others condemned it angrily, arguing that Confucius and his legacy were responsible for China's feudal, ''backward'' conditions in the twentieth century and launching campaigns to eradicate its influences. Yet Chinese continue to turn to the teachings of Confucianism for guidance in their daily lives.

The belief that everything is changing led to the disasters of the dotcom era. This book reminds us that some fundamental rules do still apply by taking readers through 20 imperatives derived from the wisdom of great leaders and management theorists including Peter Drucker, Henry Fayol, Andrew Grove and bankers and financiers such as Thomas Gresham and Warren Buffet. This entertaining run down of the fundamental laws, rules and principles business professionals should break at their peril is complemented by case studies that document the consequences of ignoring these key laws. Management from the Masters is a book to be read and re-read to reinforce the fundamental rules of business for all successful managers.

'The Encyclopedia of Leadership' brings together everything that is known and truly matters abour leadership as part of the human experience.