In Thinkers 50 Leadership: Organizational Success through Leadership, Stuart Crainer and Des Dearlove focus on various dimensions and elements of a subject that has fascinated thoughtful commentators at least since a blind poet, Homer, created the Iliad and Odyssey; then, Sophocles and Shakespeare; and more recently, business thinkers that include Warren Bennis.

Crainer and Dearlove: “Why should new leaders understand and practice the power of appreciation?”

“These leaders are connoisseurs of talent, more curators than creators. The leader is rarely the best of the brightest in the new organizations. New leaders have a smell for talent, an imaginative Rolodex, and are unafraid of hiring people who are better than they are. In my research into great groups, I found that in most cases, the leader was rarely the cleverest or the sharpest. Peter Schneider, the president of Disney’s colossally successful Feature Animation Studio, leads a group of 1,200 animators. He can’t draw to save his life. Bob Taylor, former head of the Palo Alto Research Center, where the first commercial PC was invented, wasn’t a computer scientist. Max De Pree put it best when he said that good leaders “abandon their ego to the talents of others.”

For example, after winning several NCAA and dozens of Ivy League swimming championships, the Yale teams defied tradition and never threw Coach Bob Kiphuth into the water. He couldn’t swim.

To learn more about Warren Bennis and his work, please click here.

Here is a direct link to the volumes authored by Crainer and/or Dearlove.