Since its original publication in 1995, Leading with Soul has inspired thousands of readers. Far ahead of its time, the book bravely revealed the path to leadership to be a very personal journey requiring a knowledge of self and a servant-leader mentality. Now, in this new and revised edition, authors Bolman and Deal address such currrent issues as the changing nature of work, the new face of today's workforce, and the greater need for an infusion of soul in the workplace. They also include real-life stories from readers of the first edition, and answer key questions that those readers raise. As vital as ever, this revisted narrative of an executive and his quest for deeper meaning continues to point the way to a more fulfilling work experience.
I read this for a master’s level leadership course with a few other books. The lessons in this book were good, and it was very quick read. That being said, it tops my lists of the worst written books I have read. The form and approach are messy. Reading the jumbled dialogue was infuriating. It would also take the right mindset and abilities to read past the bad form and spiritual content to see the real meaning or value. I’ll be generous with a second star simply for the fact that the the buried lessons are somewhat useful.
Spirituality is a difficult subject for me to share with others (even in a book). I have taken a different route than most and feel excluded when spiritual matters are covered with only organized religions in mind. This book is very inclusive and helped me to relate. thank you
I have eaten this book up as tho I was starving…and in many ways, my soul has been ;-)
I have in my possession a treasure…a book that confirms my path and supports me on my journey. The last several months have not been easy ones for me. Hence; perfect timing….no accidents…Godincidence. This book to reaffirmed all for me.
When I read the preface to this book, I thought—ok, more of the same—but I am open to “review work” and short to of a couple books, nothing has been grabbing me by the ass these days . Cindy had mentioned the title to me a few weeks back, over a “Vision Board” sharing, and I thought maybe there was a connection between the two tools (indeed for me). Additionally, she intrigued me, by putting a post-it on the cover and saying, “Thank you for being a Maria—a leader with soul. Can’t wait to discuss.” Sincerely, I thought—if this is a “Catholic” tale (note the capital “C”), I cannot do it…I’m still recovering after teaching 17 years of CCD…….(that, another story—BUT…I LOVE YOU ANDREW GREELEY, and Monsignor Daly, and Father Toms, and Andy…Londi). Hmmm…who was this “Maria.”
This is a story of a teacher and her student, and a journey of true spiritual growth--personal growth, albeit fiction. The authors recognize what I embrace as “flow”—I am after all, the Mermaid ! There are wonderful mini-lessons throughout the story that can each be called “teachable moments.”
If anyone would like, I have my list of favorite lines and quotes!
Not bad for a course requirement, but I struggle to get on the Boleman and Deal bus. This is our second reading from them and it feels very condescending and white-male focused. Also, common sense with the background and lived experiences I'm coming from. Maybe more powerful, white-male CEO's need this book and less emerging professionals.
I picked this up when it was assigned for my master’s program, and while it had a few interesting insights, it ultimately felt a bit dated. The mix of self-help advice and narrative storytelling didn’t quite come together for me, creating a disjointed reading experience.
🗂️ Why It Didn’t Quite Land: 📅 Outdated Content – Many of the leadership principles felt a bit out of touch with modern workplace dynamics. It’s clear that this book was written for a different era, and it could benefit from a refresh to stay relevant. 📖 Confusing Structure – The back-and-forth between the self-help sections and the fictional storyline was jarring, making it hard to stay engaged. It felt like the book couldn’t decide what it wanted to be – a parable or a practical guide. 🗣️ Questionable Framing – The central narrative of a man learning profound lessons from a wise woman felt a bit forced and, frankly, not reflective of my own experience in leadership. It read more like a trope than a meaningful exploration of mentorship.
Serendipitously, I read this book, Humble Leadership, and re-read Leader and Self-Deception. They fit quite well together. They all had the same message with different approaches to achieving authentic leadership. I give Leading with Soul a 4-star review; however, had I read it first, prior to the other two, it might have been lower. The reason is that the way the authors make their points seems is a little vague to me. The pollyannish way that the contrived Steve-Maria drama unfolds seems a little sporadic. The lack of guts of what Steve does for each epiphany gives too much of a fairy tale feel. It is sure an adder to the other two books. It is very nice to see how the spirit/soul can be folded into leadership.
This book was interesting, a little religious at times for me but by the end I think I was getting the point. This book is tough because it doesn't provide specific action items to take out of it, which might be fine. The idea is to bring a sense of spirit to work that can only come from within. Listening to your heart as your guide instead of your head. It's not that you need to change course, although that is an option, but that you need to let your heart lead your work else it will become stale. From a leadership standpoint this is something you can bring into the team and the idea is that the team will be more productive if they have a full spirit.
I think for the right reader, someone dissatisfied with his/her career in particular, this would be extremely valuable. In my case, this allegory just felt too idyllic and removed from reality. The "lessons" here are good ones, but they felt intended to "convince" as opposed to providing practical ideas on their potential manifestation. I love Bolman and Deal and am not sorry I read it, but I would recommend it to someone more lost and bleak than I feel.
I am glad I read this book, despite the fact that I did not connect with it as deeply as I had hoped. The parable at the center is just too hokey at times for my taste; I could not see myself in the protagonist. Still, the central tenets of the message--the importance of gifting authorship, love, power, and significance to others--did indeed resonate, and there is much to reflect on in this little book.
My biggest takeaway from this book were the gifts that you are able to give others as a leader and how giving those gifts will help you grow.
If you are not used to the language of soul and spirit, this book may feel like a stretch for you, but if you are looking to draw on the spiritual and on what you have within yourself to be an emotionally intelligent leader, than this book will serve you well.
I found the information about corporate leadership to be useful. The writing style was painful (no quotation marks, sentence fragments, etc). Leadership tools were described abstractly with few details of how to actually implement them. The “postlude” responds to critics of the book by including pages of accounts of people reading Leading With Soul. The overall takeaway is great: at work, don’t get too caught up in getting things done, or spirit will fall by the wayside.
I have a vague sense that someone gave me this book when I took on a leadership position at our Catholic school. Its more a management book than it is a spiritual book, to my mind. But it certainly speaks to the importance of humility as a leader, to the value of cultivating a legacy, and the idea of leadership as gift. I like the way the authors tell this story, through a fable in essence. Makes it all rather easy to digest.
Good book! It’s deep and practical however it could have gone through a few more revisions to make it easier to read. There are no quotations marks but a lot of dialogue happening so it would have been helpful to make the dialogue more understandable in its format. But if you can get past that, it actually have some great gems in it!
This story really touch me as I have started mentoring. This book will make you cry and stick with you for a very long time. To have been a book chosen for my leadership class, I really enjoyed this and will keep it on my book shelf to return to.
Cálido libro que lleva al lector a traves de un personaje en un alto cargo de la genercia de una compañía quien inicia un camino de búsqueda espiritual con la guía de una maestra.
Title: Leading With Soul Authors: Lee G. Bolman & Terrence E. Deal Publisher: Jossey-Bass
In the book, Leading With Soul: An Uncommon Journey of Spirit, Bolman and Deal use a contemporary parable of a business leader named Steve, a conflicted executive who seeks counsel from Maria, a spiritual director. Maria assists Steve in a journey of awakening to his own inner world of soul and feelings. As Steve begins to get deeper into the personal aspects of himself he begins to change and so does his style of leadership. As he brings feelings into the workplace it is difficult at first but as time goes by the results are positive not only for Steve, but for his employees and company. This story of Steve and Maria is told during the course of several meetings. With each of these visits Maria helps Steve recognize the importance of his own spirit that he has ignored. Between each of his visits with Maria, Steve struggles with himself and tests the ideas he's learned from Maria. With each meeting he describes the outcomes of his previous experiments. These outcomes are not always successful. But Maria assures him that change doesn’t come easy. Maria knows that she must help Steve understand that the spirit is in everything around us. She uses nature to begin the transformation of Steve within himself. Throughout the book Maria explains the four gifts she believes are the answer for working with others effectively. These four gifts are love, authorship, power, and significance. Between visits with Maria, Steve tackles giving the gifts on his employees to get a deeper understanding of them. Steve learns is that timing is critical when learning about and using these gifts with others if you want them accepted. With love he found that it combines caring and compassion and must be shown in both good times and bad. Steve realizes that with authorship he must give his employees the ability to take on responsibility so there can be a sense of accomplishment that is so important for job satisfaction. He also comes to realize that he needs to empower his employees so they feel some autonomy in getting things done. Now he sees how power is one of the important gifts that Maria has talked about in their meetings. The fourth gift of significance, Steve discovered on his own when an anniversary celebration went awry. He realized after talking with Maria that significance blends ritual, spontaneity, and celebration and it is an importance aspect of creativity sharing on the job. What appeared to be Steve's hardest lesson, however, is that of passing the torch. By story's end, Maria has become gravely ill and has died. Now, Steve must continue on his journey of self-exploration and growth by himself. Even more importantly, he must carry on the work of sharing the four gifts and showing others the importance of leading with soul. Through out the book Maria is telling Steve that we must all make our own way and not put someone else in charge of our spiritual journey. We must recognize and trust the power within ourselves, and be ready for the new growth. I have not been to any management or leadership programs but according to the authors most of these programs ignore or demean spirit. The authors talk about infusing the leadership programs with spirit filled forms of such things as poetry, literature, art, music, history, philosophy, and dance. If this was done individuals would be able to reclaim their hearts, soul, and spirits. Then they could share their gifts from the heart. Now for my response to the book. I wasn’t sure what to expect with this book. The sole reason this one got chosen over the other two is simply because I found this one on eBay for one dollar. I have since bought the other two and will read them next. I really enjoyed this book. It was in an easy to read format and very easy to understand. I really enjoyed being taken through Steve’s journey and his meetings with Maria. It made the whole learning experience feel almost like I was there with Steve learning at the same time. I am not in a leadership position but intend to use the gifts with my students this next school year because I believe it will work just as well for them as it will for adults in the workplace. I will give them love, authorship, power, and significance as I attempt to do it in the same fashion as Maria by allowing them to make their own way through the journey.
This is one of my "go to" books for an inspiring conversation about Leadership. I find the allegory approach and the writing to be very compelling and emotional as the character explores self-reflection. I strongly recommend it to anyone seeking more meaning in their lives and more insight into the leadership traits that create strong, trusting relationships. I give copies of this to my Executive Coaching clients. A true gem!
I began reading this book with a very open mind; it intrigued me to voyage with the protagonist, Steve, along his journey of discovery with his spiritual counselor, Maria. The book was in an easy to read format with very basic language. The basic story was easy to follow, bigwig at a company comes into a situation downtrodden, starts seeing the spiritual counselor and suddenly life turns around, while the spiritual counselor’s health takes a downturn and she passes away. The central character must then learn to lead with the spiritual guidance that he has garnered from the advisor.
After just a few chapters, I quickly realized that this book was way to over the top for me and I did not find the conversations between the characters engaging. The “full of hope” sermons did not converge into my real world work environment. What business can survive when their 10-K focuses on taking time out to think, travel and having parties and celebrations? This would be great if we lived in a Utopian society, but I live in real corporate America. Corporations cannot covert from putting our stockholders interests first and dumping the bottom line to business flowing success because everyone is happy-go-luck… That is why it is called work.
Steve reminded me of a Project Manager that I used to work with that was super religious and almost always had a glass is half full mentality. Many of us in the department speculated that he was so happy because he had no idea what was really going on, did little to no work by delegating all of his responsibilities, and was very close to retirement. Mind you, this guy was awesome to be around, but I have no idea how he kept his job….
Overall, the book reminded me of going to a conference. I love going to conferences, you get there with all of these energetic, wonderful engaged people. Speakers pump you up over a few days with how amazing the world is and how you are the catalyst of change in your work environment. You feel hopeful and refreshed when you come back to work. Then you realize that nothing has changed, you still have the same issues in your job, life is complex and work challenges are not easy to fix. So, I guess I am a skeptic. The message is great and inspirational, but in my opinion, not viable in the version of corporate America in which I function. I didn’t drink the kool-aid.