Book review: Leadership the Barack Obama Way
 Book author: Shel Leanne
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Australia
Leadership the Barack Obama Way by Dr Shel Leanne is aimed squarely at aspiring leaders or people currently in leadership positions who are keen to keep an eye open to fresh approaches that can be applied to both personal and work-related goals.
The 44th President’s historic rise to the presidency in November 2008 was undoubtedly the result of much more than luck. Dr Shel Leanne, also author of the highly successful Say it Like Obama, manages, in a greatly detailed way, to coherently analyse Obama’s leadership capacity into three parts, with 10 chapters divided into roughly a dozen sub-headings.
The end-of-chapter summaries highlight pertinent lessons and reinforce reader comprehension and reflection on their own leadership.
The book highlights Obama’s extraordinary leadership skills and gives examples of how these have been applied, including how to:
- Communicate your vision in clear, persuasive language
- Create a ‘reservoir of goodwill’
- Form and lead outstanding teams
- Harness and leverage the power of technology
- Establish trust and confidence
- Build bridges among diverse people
Leanne’s book focuses on Obama’s leadership qualities throughout his career and on his remarkable presidential campaign, rather than his current presidency. This book is certainly not a critique of his leadership ability, but rather more like homage to the man and his extraordinary team who helped put him in office.
Many argue that the President has lost some pace since taking office, particularly with the inheritance of many of the economic woes from the previous administration and the controversial reform of the health system pushed through Congress recently.
Furthermore, the book highlights Obama’s ability to ‘make friends in unusual places‘; his ability to gain support from unlikely allies during his presidential campaign, with the likes of well known conservatives such as Warren Buffett, Maria Shriver, Pat Buchanan and Colin Powell, who glowingly described Obama as a “transformational figure”.
However, his instinct for consensus may not have served him as well since becoming President , where again many critics argue he needs to be tougher and more combative to deal with the challenges of Congress.
Indeed, maybe Obama should read Ultimate Leadership: Winning Strategies for Your Situation by Russell E Palmer, which draws attention to adaptive leadership and shows ways to adapt to principles of leadership to different challenges, contexts and organisations.
Leanne’s book is very meticulous in its approach, but repetitive in many instances, where several of Obama’s qualities as a leader in various stages of his extraordinary career are repeatedly peppered throughout the book. A few chapters could have been more rigorously edited and have avoided this rather annoying aspect of the book.
The end-of-chapter summaries, however, are excellent. Titled ‘Employing the Lessons’, they give a short summary on the chapter, and then ask the reader questions about their own leadership pertaining to the lesson of the chapter. This leaves the reader time to reflect on their own practices as leader or wannabe leader.
The chapter on ‘Making Technology Your Friend’ is a fascinating insight into Obama’s use of new media technology that mobilised the youth of America and played a large hand in winning the fickle youth vote, and ultimately, the presidency.
Overall, this book is an extremely well-researched piece on Obama’s ascent to the presidency and gives some very practical advice on the qualities of a great leader.
A pity it is so repetitive.
The bottom line: Very useful
Good for: Any aspiring leader or people currently in leadership roles wanting to keep an eye on fresh leadership approaches Our rating: 7/10 |
By Victoria Barker, Editor, Women & Leadership Australia eNewsletter
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