How to Grow Leaders stresses that developing leaders is a bit more difficult than merely training them in short courses—so-called sheep dips. In a nutshell, the key to nurturing leaders is to make sure your company recognizes excellence at three levels: strategic, operational, and team. “It is a common fallacy that all an organization needs is a good strategic leader at the helm,” writes the author.
There is practical instruction here in various methods of leadership development, from the Three Circles Model, which links a task to a team and an individual, to the War Officer Selection Board, a method for identifying leadership potential in the British Armed Services that has been used successfully for the past sixty-four years.
The seven key principles referred to in the subtitle are training, selection, mentoring, gaining the chance to lead, education, strategy for development, and the chief executive.
What makes this book unique among leadership manuals, however, is that it ventures into relevant discussions of Alexander the Great, Chinese proverbs (such as “It does not matter if a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice”), Albert Einstein, the Greek concept of leadership, humility, military battles through the ages, and William Shakespeare. Throwing such a wide net to gather lessons is rarely done and then rarely done well. In this case, the result is a book that's instructive yet full of extra food for thought.
John Adair is a British veteran of the leadership field, and some of the anecdotes he shares here date back to his days teaching leadership at Sandhurst, the Royal Military Academy. These ready references to “back in the day” may annoy some, but we like the long view and find it valuable to learn from someone who has been probing the potential of leadership for at least forty years. A writer, teacher, and consultant, Adair was also the first person to assume an academic post (at the University of Surrey in 1979) dedicated to leadership studies. He's authored close to fifty books, and How to Grow Leaders serves as a fine entry point because it encapsulates his many observations.