Exceptional Leadership by Design: How Design in Great Organizations Produces Great Leadership - Hardcover

by Rob Elkington (Editor), Madeleine Van Der Steege (Editor), Judith L. Glick-Smith (Editor)

Imagine a world with great leadership. What would that world be like? Would it be a better world or a worse one? Now ratchet great leadership up to exceptional leadership and suddenly we have cause for optimism. But how do we design exceptional leadership, and would we even know it if we saw it? Traditional paradigms of leadership have celebrated decisive top-down control and analytical decision-making. But times are changing. The world is more connected, complex, fluid and interdependent.
This book debunks the myth that leaders need to be creative like designers to apply Design Thinking. Applying design approaches and practices to organizational leadership is not just about its leaders becoming more creative. It is definitely not about the person at the top coming up with the grand answer. Design thinking starts with the 'pain point' related to the problem you are trying to solve. You get to the heart of the issue. It is a collaborative effort that neatly leads stakeholders and representatives affected by the problem to design novel leadership solutions that actually work.
This collection of stories, examples and narratives about exceptional leadership by design provides readers of all levels of experience with tangible, real, and heartfelt examples of how the design process can be applied to leadership. It will show how we:

• Inform great leadership with design
• Strengthen our own leadership by design
• Redesign hero leadership for more inclusivity
• Redesign organizations for Fe+Male leadership synergy
• Design leadership for a VUCA world
• Design flow-based leadership
• Design organizations that build resilient leadership
• Design leadership for innovation
• Design culturally intelligent leadership
• Build leadership into our spaces and places

Author Biography

Rob Elkington, Ph.D. is the CEO and President of Global Leadership Initiatives. He also serves as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in the faculty of Business and IT and the faculty of Education. Rob is a facilitator with the UOIT Management Development Centre and a Senior Lecturer with the Stellenbosch University School of Public Leadership. He also serves as Community Liaison for the Durham Community Innovation Lab. Madeleine ("Mads") van der Steege, MA (Soc. Sc.) is a managing editor, award-winning female entrepreneur, master coach, researcher, and writer. She was 'Woman of the Year Regional Entrepreneur' in South Africa in 2004. In 2009, she established European operations for Cranimals, an organic pet food company based in Vancouver. In 2013, Madeleine founded Synquity, and acts as a business catalyst for international companies setting up in the Netherlands. She is also Adjunct Professor at Webster University, Leiden, and a management board member of TheBridge2Hope project. Judith L. Glick-Smith, Ph.D. has been a knowledge management and leadership consultant since 1983. She is the author of Flow-based Leadership: What the Best Firefighters Can Teach You about Leadership and Making the Hard Decisions. Judith is the founder of MentorFactor, Inc., which focuses on helping organizations facilitate flow-based work environments and to prepare for the unexpected. She has been studying flow-based leadership in the fire service since 2007. Jennifer Moss Breen, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor and Program Director for Creighton University's Interdisciplinary Leadership Ed.D. Prior to this, she served as inaugural Director of Bellevue University's Human Capital Management Ph.D. program. Her passion is working with emerging leaders and helping them to thrive in complexity. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska.