Summary
Contents
Subject index
Leadership in Nonprofit Organizations is about exemplary leadership as found in both corporate and nonprofit organizations. The authors take a fresh approach to the study of leadership: they perform research in nonprofits both to understand and appreciate their complexities, and to reachconclusions about the nature of leadership in any context, including for-profit and governmental entities. Moving from nonprofit to for-profit in this way reverses the flow of ideas as represented in the mainstream literature of leadership. The authors' journey leads through case studies of remarkable leaders succeeding in complex situations. The book explores contemporary versions of leadership as embedded in American culture. It develops the concept of good fit between the leader and circumstances in which she or he must lead; it reveals predictable leadership dynamics and cycles; it explains how leaders can increase the readiness for change in their organizations; it describes the felt experience of "flow" when successful leaders are lost in the moment. Although each chapter employs a different lens, the object is the same throughout-leadership as the practice of alignment. The result is a multifaceted view of leadership as a complex system of shifting interrelationships that yields insights useful to students, researchers and leaders themselves. Features and Benefits: Critical review of literature on leadership which encourages diversity in leadership models and approaches. Case studies of nonprofit leadership which affirm public-minded, mission-driven leaders and acknowledge their contributions. Chapters on leadership constructs such as fit, dynamics, readiness and flow which provide useful insights and methods to enable success. Overarching concept of alignment which reframes leadership as an active process where the awareness of and response to the interplay of multiple, relevant factors matters more than charisma, pedigree or power.
Introduction
Introduction
This is a book about exemplary leadership, which, in any society, is a precious resource that must be identified, nurtured, and celebrated. Good leadership can be found in both corporate and nonprofit organizations, though its corporate forms are generally taken as our culture's ideal—widely researched, broadly revered, and, as we see it, routinely misapplied to nonprofit organizations.
We began our thinking and research with a simple concern: Nonprofit leaders rarely get their due. In classrooms, government funding agencies, and charitable foundations, in their own boardrooms, and throughout the vast literature on leadership, they are regularly required to lead like their corporate colleagues—or as the popular imagery about corporate leadership would require them to lead. The distinctness and complexities of their own worlds tend to be ...
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