What Philosophy Can Teach You About Being a Better Leader

For decades, we have looked to management theorists, organizational psychologists and economists to tell us how we can squeeze the most out of people at work. The result? People are uninspired, feel like cogs in a machine and prefer to leave traditional work structures behind. Numbers and productivity can only get you so far.What Philosophy Can Teach You About Being a Better Leader offers a different route that will allow you to reconnect with the humanist values of work. By turning to philosophy, and what it teaches us about finding fulfilment and living a good life, this book uncovers the ways you can re-engage your workforce by valuing its members as people, rather than just tools within the process.The four authors argue that the rise of the 'omnipotent leader', who focuses on telling rather than leading, risks creating a new generation of feudal CEOs and needs to be resisted. With the help of Aristotle, Socrates, Kant and Nietzsche, as well as a whole host of other brilliant minds, they turn traditional management practices on their head, showing how moving away from traditional, hierarchical, risk focused control structures can lead to improved employee engagement, increased productivity and better outcomes for the entire business.

"This book restores to business thinking much of the common sense and time-polished wisdom that modern economic thinking has leached away.", "As business leaders we have an innate feeling that we have to have our team follow us and through them we achieve extraordinary results together. Unfortunately our business training and education all tend to focus on the tangible - results, KPIs, budgets and measurements, and through time these turn the focus upside down and our people somehow become means to an end rather than ends themselves and we become trapped in inhumane work environments over and over again. This book offers a real path to change for frustrated leaders and is a must-read for those who have the courage to take the first step towards making their work environment humane again - fertile ground for them and their team to flourish and contribute greatly to customers, the organization and themselves.", "At a time when trust in leadership - in business, government and civil society - is fast eroding, this book is timely, asking you powerful questions about your own meaning and purpose as a leader. The most profound answers lie in values and philosophy, which have been neglected in the world of leadership education until now. The four authors rightly place these centre stage.", "How can I flourish in an organization while helping colleagues and the organization itself to flourish? This great challenge of the modern world demands a personal response. The authors of this inspiring book evoke philosophers ancient and contemporary, bringing their insights to life as guides to wise and humane leadership.", "This book challenges the way we think about leadership, the habits and conventions that have become so ingrained that we are no longer aware of them. We are used to changing our processes, structures and systems with mixed results. It is time to take a long look in the mirror and ask ourselves deep questions about what it means to be a leader, a leader who wants to flourish and wants others to flourish. These are questions of philosophy."

Alison Reynolds is a business leader and consultant in strategy execution. She is part of the Faculty in Executive Education at Ashridge Business School.Jules Goddard is a Fellow of the Centre for Management Development at London Business School, where he has taught competitive strategy and creative marketing for 30 years. Dominic Houlder is an Adjunct Professor in Strategic and Entrepreneurial Management at London Business School. He is internationally recognised as a leading business strategist. David Lewis is Programme Director for Executive Education at London Business School and a renowned strategy and leadership expert.The four authors met while undertaking a Master's in Research in Philosophy at the University of Buckingham.