The Leadership Triad

In this concise, insightful volume, Zand dispels the mystery of leadership so that managers at all levels - from the CEO to first-line supervisor - can understand the key concepts of leadership and develop the skills needed to lead effectively. Zand cogently examines the three essential elements of high-performance leadership: knowledge, trust, and power. The knowledge that leaders need for high-quality decisions in rapidly changing competitive markets is dispersed throughout today's complex, information-dense organizations. Leaders are not omniscient and it is meaningless to expect them to be. Therefore, Zand argues, they need to know how to gain access to the knowledge of others and how to work with people to convert that knowledge into action. Zand examines how a leader's attitudes and behavior can release or repress information and insights about customers, products, processes, and competitors available throughout the organization. Trust, the second element of the triad, is the leader's key to achieving open communication and collaborative, committed action. Zand shows that the degree to which people trust a leader determines how much access they will give him or her to their knowledge and how well they will implement decisions. Power, the third element of the triad, is a leader's traditional right to make decisions and resolve conflicts. Although a leader can make decisions by command, Zand notes that in today's knowledge-driven organization with educated, informed employees, the effective leader rarely issues directives, but instead acts more as a consultant and a client. The Leadership Triad is a down-to-earth, powerful guide with many examples from the author's extensive consulting experience and from companies such as General Motors, Wal-Mart, and American Express and organizations in electronics, manufacturing, financial services, and health care. It offers a wealth of wisdom and practical information to managers at all levels, and to anyone who aspires to a leadership position.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Mental Health. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.