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Head & Heart: The Art of Modern Leadership
One of Thinkers50’s Ten Best Management Books of 2023
“A timely, actionable book on the virtues that every great leader needs to learn.”
—ADAM GRANT, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and host of the TED podcast WorkLife
Leadership is simply a series of moments, and this book gives you the tools to turn each moment into an opportunity to leave a positive legacy for those you lead.
In this ground-breaking book, award-winning leadership expert and business leader Kirstin Ferguson has written a much-needed practical guide for every modern leader. Whether you are the head of one of the largest companies in the world, supervising a small team, or guiding your family, it will be your ability to integrate your head and heart that will influence your success in leading others and navigating our complex world.
Combining studies from leading thinkers in the field with her own research, and more than three decades of personal experience, Kirstin explains the 8 key attributes of a head and heart leader and provides the tools to measure your own approach. Along the way, she shares her conversations with modern leaders from a broad range of backgrounds whose stories will surprise you, challenge your thinking and inspire you to be the type of leader the world needs.
“A timely, actionable book on the virtues that every great leader needs to learn.”
—ADAM GRANT, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Think Again and host of the TED podcast WorkLife
Leadership is simply a series of moments, and this book gives you the tools to turn each moment into an opportunity to leave a positive legacy for those you lead.
In this ground-breaking book, award-winning leadership expert and business leader Kirstin Ferguson has written a much-needed practical guide for every modern leader. Whether you are the head of one of the largest companies in the world, supervising a small team, or guiding your family, it will be your ability to integrate your head and heart that will influence your success in leading others and navigating our complex world.
Combining studies from leading thinkers in the field with her own research, and more than three decades of personal experience, Kirstin explains the 8 key attributes of a head and heart leader and provides the tools to measure your own approach. Along the way, she shares her conversations with modern leaders from a broad range of backgrounds whose stories will surprise you, challenge your thinking and inspire you to be the type of leader the world needs.
336 pages, Paperback
Published September 5, 2023
17 people are currently reading
14 people want to read
About the author
Kirstin Ferguson
4 books28 followersDr Kirstin Ferguson is a company director, columnist, keynote speaker and executive coach. Beginning her career as an officer in the Royal Australian Air Force, Kirstin has held roles that have included chief executive officer of an international consulting firm, and acting chair and deputy chair of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. She has sat on boards of both publicly-listed and privately-listed companies for more than a decade.
Kirstin has a PhD in leadership and culture, as well as honours degrees in Law and History. She is an adjunct professor at the Queensland University of Technology Business School, where she was named Outstanding Alumnus of the Year in 2020, and is a Sir Winston Churchill Fellow. She was included on Thinkers50 Radar List in 2021 and shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Award in Leadership.
Kirstin writes a weekly column on leadership and work in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, and is also a contributor to the Australian Financial Review and Forbes.
Kirstin has a PhD in leadership and culture, as well as honours degrees in Law and History. She is an adjunct professor at the Queensland University of Technology Business School, where she was named Outstanding Alumnus of the Year in 2020, and is a Sir Winston Churchill Fellow. She was included on Thinkers50 Radar List in 2021 and shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Award in Leadership.
Kirstin writes a weekly column on leadership and work in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, and is also a contributor to the Australian Financial Review and Forbes.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 13, 2024
I was genuinely looking forward to reading this book (released in September 2023), but it didn’t live up to my lofty expectations. Some of it is quite good, such as the optimistic narrative of adapting to the contemporary landscape. But I found it to lack originality, to be too long, and to be biased towards progressive/left/union/Labor interests. At 300 pages and a bit rambling at times (with too many long excerpts from interviews), this book desperately needed better quality editing.
Dr Kirstin Ferguson AM is a speaker, author, and Non-executive Director (including five years on the ABC board, and about a dozen other organisations). She served in the Air Force and had a CEO role, prior to these board appointments. She has 33k followers on LinkedIn, and is very well connected. There are seven pages of endorsements at the front, including from the current Governor-General Sam Mostyn, so clearly there are plenty of supporters.
“It is modern leaders who will most effectively lead our countries, run our businesses, make new discoveries, raise young families… Modern leaders are those who understand integrating their head and heart leadership in all aspects of their lives will help them to be the most effective leaders they can be.”
The bulk of the book is made up of overly-long chapters on four aspects of leading with our heads (curiosity, wisdom, perspective, capability) and four aspects of leading with our hearts (humility, self-awareness, courage, empathy). Not much here that is new, just re-packaged leadership material for our current era. There is a very strong lens of women’s empowerment throughout, as well as heavy identity politics. The historical context for leadership in the first part of the book is unsatisfyingly biased, and doesn’t bolster the arguments…
There is a curious choice of subjects: Jacinda Ardern is highlighted upfront (she resigned from the New Zealand PM’s role nine months before a huge election loss); Professor Megan Davis (a key proponent of the Voice referendum, which failed to get support from three-fifths of Australians); Black Lives Matter (which has been entangled in fraud and mismanagement); Craig Foster (messy departure from Republican Movement, serious disagreement with his Co-Chair); Sally McManus; and Mark Scott… Following the advice in this book has resulted in pubic companies spending millions of shareholder funds on the failed referendum, policy choices that don’t match the majority of voters, and disastrous election losses.
The “word-to-wisdom ratio” on page 140 has been confusingly mixed up, and the text references are backwards.
“Leading with the head and heart is not about the physical location of the people you lead but about how you embrace flexibility in your thinking about how the work you need completed, is done. Modern leaders put people at the centre of that decision-making, understanding that without an engaged, motivated and purpose-led workforce, any business goals are likely to fail.”
Overall, the book is an okay summary of what a lot of other people have been saying for years. You may like it, if your political and cultural preferences overlap with Ferguson’s. I hope that her future books have much tighter editing, and that there is much more balance in them.
Dr Kirstin Ferguson AM is a speaker, author, and Non-executive Director (including five years on the ABC board, and about a dozen other organisations). She served in the Air Force and had a CEO role, prior to these board appointments. She has 33k followers on LinkedIn, and is very well connected. There are seven pages of endorsements at the front, including from the current Governor-General Sam Mostyn, so clearly there are plenty of supporters.
“It is modern leaders who will most effectively lead our countries, run our businesses, make new discoveries, raise young families… Modern leaders are those who understand integrating their head and heart leadership in all aspects of their lives will help them to be the most effective leaders they can be.”
The bulk of the book is made up of overly-long chapters on four aspects of leading with our heads (curiosity, wisdom, perspective, capability) and four aspects of leading with our hearts (humility, self-awareness, courage, empathy). Not much here that is new, just re-packaged leadership material for our current era. There is a very strong lens of women’s empowerment throughout, as well as heavy identity politics. The historical context for leadership in the first part of the book is unsatisfyingly biased, and doesn’t bolster the arguments…
There is a curious choice of subjects: Jacinda Ardern is highlighted upfront (she resigned from the New Zealand PM’s role nine months before a huge election loss); Professor Megan Davis (a key proponent of the Voice referendum, which failed to get support from three-fifths of Australians); Black Lives Matter (which has been entangled in fraud and mismanagement); Craig Foster (messy departure from Republican Movement, serious disagreement with his Co-Chair); Sally McManus; and Mark Scott… Following the advice in this book has resulted in pubic companies spending millions of shareholder funds on the failed referendum, policy choices that don’t match the majority of voters, and disastrous election losses.
The “word-to-wisdom ratio” on page 140 has been confusingly mixed up, and the text references are backwards.
“Leading with the head and heart is not about the physical location of the people you lead but about how you embrace flexibility in your thinking about how the work you need completed, is done. Modern leaders put people at the centre of that decision-making, understanding that without an engaged, motivated and purpose-led workforce, any business goals are likely to fail.”
Overall, the book is an okay summary of what a lot of other people have been saying for years. You may like it, if your political and cultural preferences overlap with Ferguson’s. I hope that her future books have much tighter editing, and that there is much more balance in them.
May 28, 2023
A generic leadership book with some useful parts, but odd examples and a confusing new model ("head and heart leadership").
I read this book as I was fascinated by the new concept of "Head and Heart Leadership". The concept is the author's new way of understanding both the emotional and logical approaches to leadership, grounded in an Australian context. The book is presented as four parts - a grounding in leadership studies, key attributes for heart leadership, key attributes for head leadership, and an approach to integrating these.
The strengths of the books are it's examples. The author uses interviews with Australian leaders from diverse and interesting backgrounds. Tanya Monroe is a particular standout - every interview splice with her input is fascinating.
That said, the book has distinct weaknesses. First, anecdotes from these interviews are used as examples throughout each chapter, often without any deep analysis of what the person did, or whether it even worked. Examples are presented almost as if we are to take it on faith that they show the concept - and often that's not very clear.
Second, this book introduced you to the "Modern Leader". This term is used over and over, ad nauseam, as attributes of a Modern Leader are defined. We're told that everyone is a Modern Leader, everyone has these attributes. But I'm not convinced this is actually a helpful approach to leadership.
Third, some of the examples are just weird. They don't make sense or support the point the author is making. Some are jarring. Some are short throwaways without further explanation. The author refers in 2-3 places to her air force cadet experience - I'm not sure these are the strongest examples in support.
Third, the final part on integration of head and heart has to be the weakest. From the opening example - leadership of King Gustavus Adolphus in the 1650s in Sweden and how it would've been better with head and heart leadership (what!!!?!) - it's a collection of hunches and evidence free assertions that were unpersuasive. If it was meant to show how to integrate head and heart, it didn't - it didn't even refer to the previously discussed attributes. Just repeating "Person X showed head and heart leadership" at the end of each example doesnt make it so!
More fundamentally, I'm not sure this is anything new. There's plenty of ex service personnel repackaging the armed forces version of leadership attributes (John Cantwells Leadership in Action came to mind) that do it in a clearer and more structured way. But they don't claim to understand Modern Leaders. This book does.
New studies of leadership focus on leadership as an emergent behaviour - the unit of focus isn't the leader, it's the leadership demonstrated in action and behaviour (see, for example, Complexity Leadership Theory). The author is so close to this realization in the final chapter, as she concludes "the art of.modern leadership is simply knowing what attributes you need and when". This book is not a good guide to answer that question.
I read this book as I was fascinated by the new concept of "Head and Heart Leadership". The concept is the author's new way of understanding both the emotional and logical approaches to leadership, grounded in an Australian context. The book is presented as four parts - a grounding in leadership studies, key attributes for heart leadership, key attributes for head leadership, and an approach to integrating these.
The strengths of the books are it's examples. The author uses interviews with Australian leaders from diverse and interesting backgrounds. Tanya Monroe is a particular standout - every interview splice with her input is fascinating.
That said, the book has distinct weaknesses. First, anecdotes from these interviews are used as examples throughout each chapter, often without any deep analysis of what the person did, or whether it even worked. Examples are presented almost as if we are to take it on faith that they show the concept - and often that's not very clear.
Second, this book introduced you to the "Modern Leader". This term is used over and over, ad nauseam, as attributes of a Modern Leader are defined. We're told that everyone is a Modern Leader, everyone has these attributes. But I'm not convinced this is actually a helpful approach to leadership.
Third, some of the examples are just weird. They don't make sense or support the point the author is making. Some are jarring. Some are short throwaways without further explanation. The author refers in 2-3 places to her air force cadet experience - I'm not sure these are the strongest examples in support.
Third, the final part on integration of head and heart has to be the weakest. From the opening example - leadership of King Gustavus Adolphus in the 1650s in Sweden and how it would've been better with head and heart leadership (what!!!?!) - it's a collection of hunches and evidence free assertions that were unpersuasive. If it was meant to show how to integrate head and heart, it didn't - it didn't even refer to the previously discussed attributes. Just repeating "Person X showed head and heart leadership" at the end of each example doesnt make it so!
More fundamentally, I'm not sure this is anything new. There's plenty of ex service personnel repackaging the armed forces version of leadership attributes (John Cantwells Leadership in Action came to mind) that do it in a clearer and more structured way. But they don't claim to understand Modern Leaders. This book does.
New studies of leadership focus on leadership as an emergent behaviour - the unit of focus isn't the leader, it's the leadership demonstrated in action and behaviour (see, for example, Complexity Leadership Theory). The author is so close to this realization in the final chapter, as she concludes "the art of.modern leadership is simply knowing what attributes you need and when". This book is not a good guide to answer that question.
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October 27, 2023I really enjoyed the audiobook. It’s a good way to reflect on how you operate in work and your personal life and areas you could improve. There’s also a free test you can do that goes along with this book.
If you’ve read every leadership book under the sun, then you might not find this particularly revolutionary. But for most people, I think you’ll get something positive out of the experience.
If you’ve read every leadership book under the sun, then you might not find this particularly revolutionary. But for most people, I think you’ll get something positive out of the experience.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews