Leaders: Myth and Reality

by Stanley McChrystal, Jeff Eggers, Jay Mangone

An instant national bestseller! Stanley McChrystal, the retired US Army general and bestselling author of Team of Teams, profiles thirteen of history’s great leaders, including Walt Disney, Coco Chanel, and Robert E. Lee, to show that leadership is not what you think it is—and never was.Stan McChrystal served for thirty-four years in the US Army, rising from a second lieutenant in the 82nd Airborne Division to a four-star general, in command of all American and coalition forces in Afghanistan. During those years he worked with countless leaders and pondered an ancient “What makes a leader great?” He came to realize that there is no simple answer. McChrystal profiles thirteen famous leaders from a wide range of eras and fields—from corporate CEOs to politicians and revolutionaries. He uses their stories to explore how leadership works in practice and to challenge the myths that complicate our thinking about this critical topic. With Plutarch’s Lives as his model, McChrystal looks at paired sets of leaders who followed unconventional paths to success. For instance. . .· Walt Disney and Coco Chanel built empires in very different ways. Both had public personas that sharply contrasted with how they lived in private. · Maximilien Robespierre helped shape the French Revolution in the eighteenth century; Abu Musab al-Zarqawi led the jihadist insurgency in Iraq in the twenty-first. We can draw surprising lessons from them about motivation and persuasion. · Both Boss Tweed in nineteenth-century New York and Margaret Thatcher in twentieth-century Britain followed unlikely roads to the top of powerful institutions. · Martin Luther and his future namesake Martin Luther King Jr., both local clergymen, emerged from modest backgrounds to lead world-changing movements.   Finally, McChrystal explores how his former hero, General Robert E. Lee, could seemingly do everything right in his military career and yet lead the Confederate Army to a devastating defeat in the service of an immoral cause. Leaders will help you take stock of your own leadership, whether you’re part of a small team or responsible for an entire nation.

Genres: Leadership, Nonfiction, History, Business, Biography, Military Fiction, Management

476 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 23, 2018

About the author

Stanley Allen McChrystal (born August 14, 1954) is a retired United States Army General. His last assignment was as Commander, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A). He previously served as Director, Joint Staff from August 2008 to June 2009 and as Commander, Joint Special Operations Command from 2003 to 2008, where he was credited with the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, but also criticized for his alleged role in the cover-up of the Pat Tillman friendly fire incident. McChrystal was reportedly known for saying and thinking what other military leaders were afraid to; this was one of the reasons cited for his appointment to lead all forces in Afghanistan. He held the post from June 15, 2009, to June 23, 2010.

Following unflattering remarks about Vice President Joe Biden and other administration officials attributed to McChrystal and his aides in a Rolling Stone article, McChrystal was recalled to Washington, D.C., where President Barack Obama accepted his resignation as commander in Afghanistan. His command of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan was immediately assumed by the deputy commander, British General Sir Nicholas "Nick" Parker, pending the confirmation of a replacement. Obama named General David Petraeus as McChrystal's replacement; Petraeus was confirmed by the Senate and officially assumed command on June 30. Days after being relieved of his duties in Afghanistan, McChrystal announced his retirement.

In 2010, after leaving the Army, McChrystal joined Yale University as a Jackson Institute for Global Affairs senior fellow. He teaches a course entitled "Leadership," a graduate-level seminar with some spots reserved for undergraduates. The course received 250 applications for 20 spots in 2011 and is being taught for a third time in 2013.

McChrystal co-founded and is a partner at the McChrystal Group LLC, an Alexandria, Virginia-based consulting firm.

McChrystal's memoir, My Share of the Task, published by Portfolio of the Penguin Group, was released on January 7, 2013. The autobiography had been scheduled to be released in November 2012, but was delayed due to security clearance approvals required from the Department of Defense.

McChrystal is the son of Mary Gardner Bright and Major General Herbert J. McChrystal, Jr., and was the fourth child in a family of five boys and a girl, all of whom would serve in the military or marry military spouses. His older brother, Colonel Scott McChrystal, is a retired Army chaplain, and is the endorsing agent for the Assemblies of God.

McChrystal married his wife Annie in April 1977, and the couple has one adult son, Sam.

Reviews

[Mary · Rating 2 out of 5]

Leadership Leads To Disappointment

Most of the book simply describes the lives of several leaders without making many points. I believe a much better format would have been to make a comment about leadership and then back it up with examples. I have read over a dozen books on leadership while researching my dissertation that were much better in making their points.

[Ronald Golden · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, this book was not what I expected. I have read several go Gen. McChrystal’s books including “Team of Teams” and “My Share of the Task.” Both of which I found to be compelling descriptions of leadership in action. I expected this book to be another in that framework. It was not. “Leaders, Myth and Reality” examines the myth of leadership by examining and comparing 13 different leaders in categories such as reformers, geniuses, founders and zealots. I never thought when I opened this book that I would be reading about Coco Channel and Walt Disney. In these comparisons, Gen. McChrystal examines the mythology of leadership and compares it to the realities of the real person and the real world.
Gen. McChrystal examines the “Great Man” theory of leadership that emphasizes the single leader centric aspect, and compares it to the theory that leadership is more a function of the system and environment in which the leader lives and operates.
Overall I found this book to be even better than I expected it to be. It is a must read for anyone who wants to examine leadership in depth.

[Josh Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leaders is a deeper look into the definitions and perceptions of leadership in the modern age. It is written by a highly conventionally trained leader - Gen Stan McChrystal. The book was written in an effort to understand leadership and approached the task by profiling 6 sets of historical leaders. For each person, the book discusses how each came to arrive at their leadership positions and the tools and traits they used to successfully navigate their roles.

They are presented in the following sets.
Founders - Coco Channel and Walt Disney
Geniuses - Albert Einstein and Leo Bernstein
Zealots - Maximillian Robespierre and Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi
Heroes 0 Zheng He and Harriet Tubman
Power Brokers Boss Tweed and Margeret Thatcher
Reformers Martin Luther and MLK

The opening of the book also evaluates Robert E. Leee who was a big influence in the life of the author.

As the book progress, it becomes obvious that the author is a proud military historian (ie lots of references and long-winded explanations using big words). It also shows that this classically trained leader is heavily evaluating what he has learned and thought about leadership over a very successful career.
This reflection results in him proposing a new definition and framework of leadership, by first debunking the three largest myths about leadership
1. Formula myth - leadership is attainable by following a procedure or checklist. Not true leadership is highly dynamic and situational.
2. Attribution Myth - the success is directly attributable to the leader. Not true leaders are not necessarily heroes, and the success is largely dependant on the team involved, the resources available and the time/context of the success.
3. Results myth - leadership is mostly about results. Not true - the appearance, actions, and style of the leader is highly important as they symbolize what the followers want/need.

The book is closed with proposing a new definition of leadership and by suggesting that we revise how leadership is explained or trained. I summarize the new definition of leadership as follows which is largely paraphrased/plagiarized from the book.
The goal of the leader (leadership) is to viscerally craft a sense of what is possible by understanding the hopes and fears that the team has about their future state of being.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was ok. Interesting mini-biographies of 12 important leaders. However the writing wasn’t very polished (several frustrating typos which I would have expected to have been caught by a general).

His most interesting insight, which he made persuasively, and which I find most compelling given his combat experience, was that leaders are not solely judged by their results. Instead, leaders function as much as symbols than as decision makers. We can trick ourselves into believing the “results fallacy”, that we are all rational beings and evaluate a leader based upon the value they provide us as followers. But often, leaders provide their followers both tactical leadership, and a sense of confidence and believe in the possible.

In a sense, and I think the author would regret my having gleaned this from the book, we still need great men.

[Jonathan Tennis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stan McChrystal served for thirty-four years in the US Army retiring as a four-star General. At some point, he learned a thing or two about leadership. And that’s what makes this book so great is that he explains that no matter what he’s learned, there’s still more to learn. He spends the entire book trying to answer the question: “What makes a leader great?” This book has it all and is a dense, but enjoyable read. I picked it up because I was curious what he had to say and learned a lot about Walt Disney, Coco Chanel, Maximilien Robespierre, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Boss Tweed, Margaret Thatcher, Martin Luther, Martin Luther King Jr. and more along the way.

[George P. · Rating 4 out of 5]

What is leadership? John Maxwell’s definition is the most common answer: “Leadership is influence.” That’s true to an extent, but it’s also too simple because it’s leader-centric, as if influence flowed only one way. In their new book, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Jeff Eggers, and Jason Mangone identify three myths people believe about leaders and offer a more complex definition of leadership. Somewhat ironically for a book that criticizes leader-centricity, Leadersreaches its conclusions by examining the lives of thirteen leaders.

First up is Robert E. Lee, the “Marble Man” of the Confederacy, who profoundly illustrates the distance between the myths and realities of leadership. Lee was admired by many white Americans for his martial valor and personal virtue. That admiration was given even though Lee lost the Civil War and miserably failed the greatest moral test of the nineteenth century by defending a way of life built on white supremacy and black slavery. His leadership consisted in what he symbolized, then, not in what achieved — or rather, thankfully failed to achieve.

Then come several chapters in which McChrystal and his coauthors pair leaders under six headings: Founders (Walt Disney and Coco Chanel), Geniuses (Albert Einstein and Leonard Bernstein), Zealots (Maximilien Robespierre and Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi), Heroes (Zheng He and Harriet Tubman), Power Brokers (Boss Tweed and Margaret Thatcher), and Reformers (Martin Luther and Martin Luther King Jr.). These leaders often exercised influence despite their personal flaws (e.g., Boss Tweed) or the immorality of their causes (e.g., Zarqawi). Their profiles remind readers that leaders are flesh-and-blood people, not statues on pedestals.

Taken both singly and in pairs, these profiles make Leaders a fascinating book, biographically informative but also analytically shrewd. As you read each short “life,” you come to realize that leaders exercise an important role, but not in the way that a simplistic definition portrays. Too simple an understanding of leadership results in myths about leadership, which McChrystal, Eggers, and Mangone describe this way:

The Formulaic Myth: In our attempt to understand process, we strive to tame leadership into a static checklist, ignoring the reality that leadership is intensely contextual, and always dependent upon particular circumstances.
The Attribution Myth: We attribute too much to leaders, having a biased form of tunnel vision focused on leaders themselves, and neglecting the agency of the group that surrounds them. We’re led to believe that leadership is what the leader does, but in reality, outcomes are attributable to far more than the individual leader.
The Results Myth: We say that leadership is the process of driving groups of people toward outcomes. That’s true, to a point, but it’s much broader than that. In reality, leadership describes what leaders symbolize more than what they achieve. Productive leadership requires that followers find a sense of purpose and meaning in what their leaders represent, such as social identity or some future opportunity.

The key concepts to take away from the authors’ description of these myths are the importance of context, relationship, and symbolism in leadership. According to the authors, when those concepts are taken into account, leadership can be defined as “a complex system of relationships between leaders and followers, in a particular context, that provides meaning to its members.” This implies that leaders exercise a twofold role as “a bottom-up servant to enable action and a top-down symbol to motivate and provide for meaning.”

I write this review as a Pentecostal minister and editor of a Christian leadership magazine — intentionally named Influence, by the way. Though Leaders is a secular leadership book, it teaches several valuable lessons that can benefit pastors and other church leaders. I’ll close with four that came repeatedly to mind as I read the book:

First, as pastors and leaders in your church, there is no fool-proof, multi-step formula for becoming or producing other leaders. You should have a leadership pipeline and provide leadership training for your staff and volunteers, but you should also keep your eyes open for influencers who arise through other means. Paul’s leadership pipeline was the Damascus Road, after all, not the Jerusalem church.

Second, share the work of ministry with others. Too often, we speak of what Pastor So-and-so accomplished at Such-and-such Church, as if he or she accomplished everything alone. But as Paul put it, the congregation is a body in which every member must do its part. So, share the work and spread the credit around.

Third, tend to your soul. Jesus said, “Follow me.” Paul wrote, “Imitate me as I imitate Christ.” People will follow your leadership if you personally embody the joy and life-changing power of the gospel. Who you are as a leader is as important as what you do, in other words, because who you are as a spiritual leader symbolizes the life of meaning and eternal significance that people aspire to in Christ.

Fourth, and finally, use your leadership for good. Both Robert E. Lee and Martin Luther King Jr. were Christians. And yet, at the height of their leadership, separated by a century, they exerted influence to achieve morally contradictory goals — Lee in defense of white supremacy and King in defense of racial equality. At the end of the day, however one defines leadership, shouldn’t doing the right thing be the most basic test of our leadership?

Book Reviewed
Stanley McChrystal, Jeff Eggers, and Jason Mangone, Leaders: Myth and Reality (New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2018).

P.S. If you liked my review, please vote “Helpful” on my Amazon review page.

P.P.S. This review is cross-posted from InfluenceMagazine.com with permission.

[William Bahr · Rating 5 out of 5]

A leading-edge book on leadership!

first became acquainted with this book when I read McChrystal’s excellent article in “The Atlantic” criticizing one of my heroes, Robert E. Lee. Intrigued, I checked his book out of my public library to update my own books on strategy and leadership through character, especially as demonstrated in the French Revolution. Given the many interesting points made (I paper-clipped about 40 pages in the library book) especially a few about Robespierre, I probably should have bought the book.

Overall, the information provided is excellent. Unfortunately, I couldn’t mark up the book to highlight the gems within it so as to better understand the assertions by later reviewing the pages containing them. Doing so might have helped me work around the book’s habit of effectively saying, “Yes, but on one hand, then on another, then on another, then on….” So, while at times the book was an easy read, at other times, especially when trying to glean summary lessons (which after all is the point of most books of this type), the book was complex. Simple methods of actually enumerating issues (eg, 1. 2. 3.) would have helped. Putting boxes around interesting but ancillary information, which distracted somewhat from the flow and the point(s) being made, also would have been appreciated. Making the diagram on page 397, which effectively summed up the essence of the book, bigger so that one didn’t need a magnifying glass to read the words, would be an improvement. The complexity and often long sentences also must have affected the authors, as a couple of times they repeated significant sentence fragments within just a line or two. And I am still pondering "the meaning" and its value of their definition of leadership (under that diagram on page 397): "...leadership is a complex system of relationships between leaders and followers, in a particular context, that provides meaning to its members."

Bottom-line, despite the issues above, I highly recommend you purchase this book. Then, while reading it, under-line it and review it, especially the “Redefining Leadership” chapter. You’ll enjoy the stories about famous leaders and appreciate the complexity of their accomplishments.

Note: I periodically update my own books, not only to add new information but to change things when I find I didn’t practice what I preach. Writing a book to satisfy everyone is not easy. As they say, “Perfection is not accidental.” Thus again, as a fellow author, my kudos to McChrystal and his fellow authors for a worthy effort on a captivating but difficult subject!

[Daniella Mestyanek · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the latest book by General (Ret) Stanley McChrystal’s traditional concepts of leadership are turned on their head. As a leader who was himself mythologized and vilified in turn, McChrystal takes a close, personal look at the myth of leadership and how it has impacted the modern world throughout history. McChrystal walks us through profiles of 12 leaders, each grouped into a category: The Founders, The Geniuses, The Zealots, The Heroes, The Power Brokers and The Reformers. The 13th leader stands alone, begging to be paired with the leadership of the author himself. Indeed, Stan McChrystal takes the reader on a personal journey when he talks about Robert E. Lee, a lifelong inspiration of his, and his mental battle with forsaking the man he once revered as a hero—literally taking his picture off the wall and out of his life.

This book is appealing for many reasons: while academically challenging, it’s also fun to read—as opposed to the dry, boring nature of some other leadership tomes. Most importantly, it will make you think about leadership in ways that you likely haven’t before. If you are looking for a leadership checklist, or steps to follow, then don’t waste your time here. In fact, at the conclusion of the book, McChrystal sums up 3 myths about leadership—beginning by debunking checklists.

The Formulaic Myth: If someone follows a checklist of behaviors, they'll be a great leader. The author reminds us that “life is messy and taking the best advice or following a well-worn path to success is not sufficient for being an effective leader.” (Business Insider)

The Attribution Myth: The successes and failures of a team are all the results of its leader. When writing his own memoirs, McChrystal conducted research into the events leading to his own epic resignation during the height of his career. He assumed it would be straightforward, but found that it wasn’t, leading him to study, and debunk, the ‘Great Man Theory’ of leadership. (Business Insider)

The Results Myth: Delivering results is all that's required for positions of power and accolades. "You can have one person who's producing or likely to produce a great outcome, but somebody else who can make us feel good or make us feel scared or make us something that inspires us to action, we often will go that way, much more than we will direct results," (Business Insider)

You might well be wondering, well, if none of these things are true about leadership, then what’s left? And you’d be close to understanding the point of McChrystal’s questioning mind and scholarship that goes into this book. Quite frankly, the thesis can be summed up as, most of what we’ve been taught about leadership is one-sided, simplified, and sometimes plain wrong. His final definition of leadership is this: “Leadership is a complex system of relationships between leaders and followers, in a particular context, that provides meaning to its members.” (Leaders, pg. 397)

Why We Should Care

This book irrevocably caught my attention near the very beginning when the author states that, “…leadership is neither good nor evil…leadership is better judged as effective or not” (Leaders, pg. 20). One of the interesting conundrums he sets out for the reader is that when we default to judging leaders as ‘good or bad’, we are missing most of the picture—a picture always full of nuances, cultural & historical context, and the role of legend in the making of a leader. The question of effective leadership has been rattling around in my head for quite some time, without my yet having the rhetoric to express it.

I grew up surrounded by leaders, in one of the more intense organizations in modern history—a religious cult known as The Children of God. I’ve often wondered why this organization’s leader has never really been studied—on the face of it he was a dynamic and engaging leader that convinced almost 100,000 people to follow him for over 50 years, including after his own death. They dedicated their lives to him, giving up creature comforts, living communally, and travelling the world preaching about God. He crossed over unarguably into ‘bad’ when he began to evangelize prostitution, pedophilia, polygamy and incest as the will of God. Still, there was obviously something there, right? Like me, McChrystal asks the question, “how does leadership help take people to dark places? (Leaders, pg. 153), a question that many others are beginning to ask in our current political climate(all political innuendo is my own).

The author explores the concept of power, the intoxication of it, and the toxicity that it often brings in its wake. “Power is not an absolute state, but an arrangement amongst stakeholders” (Leaders, pg. 298), reemphasizing that groups often are complicit in giving leaders the power that eventually hurts them. He invites you to think about how power and leadership interact, often outside of the shared values of an organization. “Once a leader has charge of an institution, he gets to wield its power, whatever his values are.” (Leaders, pg. 257) Interesting profiles of not commonly studied leaders include zealots like Robespierre, Al-Zarqawi (who’s death McChrystal himself is credited with), and even Martin Luther (though the author classifies him as a reformer for the book’s purposes).

In a time of complexity in our nation’s leadership (all political innuendo is mine alone), when many folks are asking “What should a leader be?” this book is both timely and effective—turning almost every traditional leadership theory on its head. At the end of the day, the closer we study leaders who have been effective—as in had others follow them—as well as the context in which they were leading, the better we will understand the workings of a subject as complex as leadership. This is a book that will certainly be in almost every cannon of leadership books, while creating almost more questions than it answers—something I think every good book should do.

I hope you will read this book, which is available for your convenience here, or wherever you buy your books. I suggest reading with a notepad nearby, as I filled up nearly 8 pages of quotes and powerful statements, that will likely be rattling around in my brain and in future professional content for years to come. If you’re not looking to become a student of leadership, all difficult questions included, then please disregard—this book can be hard to digest. I believe that one of the qualities that effective leaders share is that they are all students of leadership—the good, the bad and the heinous.

[Remo Biagioni · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is different to most books on leadership I've read. General McChrystal's pedigree is first class; I'd expected to pick up a few hints and tips on how to lead from one of the US' greatest military leaders. I didn't get that: I got something much, much better. The book, like many others, offers leadership lessons by examining the lives of historical figures. Where the book starts to depart from the mainstream is the choice of leaders including Einstein, Channel, Disney and Robespierre. The authors dissect leadership drawing out three myths, show how leadership depends on context, followers, communication and even a bit of luck. If you want a step by step recipe of how to be a great leader this book will disappoint. If you want to deepen your understanding of leadership I can't think of a better place to start.

[Saul V · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great review of 13 leaders—some giants of history, some merely footnotes. Stanley McChrystal takes a deep dive into the myth vs reality of leadership and dispels many assumptions we tend to make about the importance of the individual in getting to desired outcomes.

[Aaron Cash · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was ok, not quite my style of leadership lessons.

[Devon Aguirre · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book didn’t have enough new knowledge especially considering the author. It was just a history of randomly selected leaders.

[Espen Stølan Holten · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kul idé å se på ledere vi ikke identifiserer oss med (f.eks. al-Zarqawi) og hvorfor de var effektive innen sin kontekst
Ble litt lange kapitler der poenget kom frem lenge før kapitlet var ferdig.

[Scott Wozniak · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s mostly not a leadership book. This is 80% biographies of notable figures. There are some very brief comments about their leadership at the end of the chapter-long biography of each leader, but it’s not until the last chapter of the book that we get an entire section on leadership ideas. And even then, he’s more into the importance of the system than the leader alone. But the biographies are good (he even includes the biography of one of his war enemies) and it was well written (style was smooth and clear).

[Nick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Didn’t finish. Brief histories of leaders with immaterial new research or context added. Unclear why McChrystal put his name on this given the excellence of his previous efforts such as Team of Teams.

[Randall Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

While well written, its obvious that General McChrystal has surrendered to political correctness - from his decision to trash General Lee to his statement that Leadership Studies have suffered due to the Patriarchy. While the various biographical sketches were interesting and informative, his reasoning for some of the choices and their contributions to "leadership" are somewhat questionable, especially when he lauds them for for the same things he faults General Lee for, such as their willingness to put it all on the line for their beliefs (his section on Zealots, for example) and their abilities to make people want to follow them. Furthermore, his reasons for dismissing Robert E. Lee are spurious. For example, he compared Lee to Benedict Arnold, despite no similarities: Arnold did what he did while a member of the Continental Army and for personal enrichment. Lee, on the other hand, did not offer to surrender any troops, forts, or territories to the new Confederate government. Not to mention, he resigned well before receiving a summons to defend Virginia. Furthermore, the General fails to note the historical reasons for Lee's resignation: namely, that at that time, most people felt more loyalty to their state than to a Federal government that was small and not as into every aspect of it's citizen's lives as it is today. Based on our Republican form of government, it makes perfect sense that he would consider himself a Virginian first.

[T · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved the idea of this book from the descriptions and the intro and was very excited about digging in. I was also particularly fascinated by the author's perspective on Lee, which he'd discussed in a smaller cut in an Atlantic article.

I was thus nonplussed to discover that the big "rethink" about Lee seemed to include not much...thought. If anything it seemed like a long discussion of why the author actually still reveres Lee, and no longer does so openly for political reasons. I'd hoped for a thoughtful analysis and conclusion and what I got instead was a thoughtful discussion, a handwaving at conclusions for political reasons, and no connecting discussion or reasoning. I ended up feeling this chapter was included only for marketing reasons.

I went a bit further in the book as well, but not very far, feeling that the rest seemed much more of a white paper-style consulting report than I'd expected, and when combined with the lack of real thought and analysis in the first one I thus stopped listening and moved on. Disappointing.

[Casey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Call it 2.75 stars. I need some more time to reflect, but my initial reaction was the book felt like a collection of HBR articles and not a flowing leadership tome. Certainly an eclectic list of leaders to write about, I also struggled with the underlying thread that brought it all together. I’m a huge fan of Team of Teams, and this did not meet the mark.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I owe this book a reading of the last couple chapters. The audiobook didn't allow me to sit with the ideas presented long enough to digest the conclusion. I think a reread of these chapters will provide a lot more insight into the overall premise.

I think the book missed an opportunity to elaborate a little on the leadership of each individual at the end of their chapter. Instead, the authors saved it all to the end. I also felt that their was an attempt to gloss over character flaws of individuals in an effort to craft a narrative that fit with the author's thesis as well as align with other thinly veiled views.

[Dоcтоr · Rating 1 out of 5]

Didn't finish, had some good advice, but got very boring with some authors.

What the book is lacking, is the clear path that it tries to walk the reader in to.

[Chainsaw · Rating 4 out of 5]

This books seeks to discredit three mythologies surrounding "leadership" and promote a new approach to the concept, using case studies of 13 historic leaders to do so.

The leaders are:
"The Marble Man" - Robert E. Lee
"The Founders" - Walt Disney, Coco Chanel
"The Geniuses" - Albert Einstein, Leonard Bernstein
"The Zealots" - Maximilien Robespierre, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi
"The Heroes" - Zheng He, Harriet Tubman
"The Power Brokers" - William Magear "Boss" Tweed, Margaret Thatcher
"The Reformers" - Martin Luther, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The leadership mythologies are:
1) The Formulaic Myth - Successful leadership can be assured by achieving a checklist of leadership characteristic traits. Follow the formula.
2) The Attribution Myth - We attribute success or failure too much to the individual leader, ignoring the effect of the group that follows him/her. "Leadership is what the leader does."
3) The Results Myth - Leadership means driving groups of people toward outcomes.

As the author's stated intent was to dispel the above myths, little of each case study specifically discussed particular leadership techniques or characteristics, other than the fact that few of the leaders referenced had actually received formal preparation or leadership training for the roles they ultimately played.

Given the concept of networked organizational and leadership systems the author came to develop and quite effectively use during his service in the military, it stands to reason that this "networked" perspective is also foundational to his proposed leadership model. Rather than a leader as "Great Man" or "Servant Leader," the author forwards a concept with the leader as one node in a networked relationship that also includes followers and context, all of them both influencing and affected by "leadership." This concept acknowledges the roles followers, timing, and circumstances have on reality, in addition to the "leaders" themselves, in whether a group achieves success or falls short of its objectives.

If a reader is looking for a text that describes, compares, and contrasts characteristics and techniques of a collection of historical leaders, he or she should seek elsewhere. This book is well-written, with case studies that are highly educational, but it intentionally does not focus on the leadership "traits" or techniques of its subjects so much as providing context for the conditions they faced and the background that did or didn't help prepare them for the leadership roles they filled. That said, it does provide refreshing and useful perspective on how one can approach the concept of "leadership" as either a potential leader, follower, or student of the topic.

Recommended!

[Scott Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Audiobook) A good read from a man who has had significant experience studying and practicing leadership in his professional career as soldier. This book attempts to pattern itself off of Plutarch’s famous comparative works on various leaders in Ancient Greece/Rome, attempting to balance the myth and reality of those individuals. McCrystal tries to create a sort of modern version of this, comparing and contrasting a series of leaders across modern times. There is an outlier in his individual analysis of Robert E. Lee, but you suspect that this was a recent add to the work, as he doesn’t compare Lee with anyone, but address the recent controversy about Lee, especially in the wake of the events in New Orleans and Charlottesville in 2017.

One thing of note is that McCrystal broadens his scope of leaders. That he would discuss people like Lee or Zheng He is understandable and a bit expected. His comparisons of Margaret Thatcher and Boss Tweed is not a stretch for his analysis. Yet, he also incorporates comparisons between Walt Disney and Coco Chanel and between Albert Einstein and Leonard Bernstein. In the study of leaders, he does not limit his horizons and for good reason, as leadership spans all areas and subjects. He notes how each led their respective areas, with both positive and negative characteristics. He does not offer any of these subjects as model, but offers a view of how people are leaders and how they can lead. The book concludes with his analysis that leadership is hard to define and what make a leader effective can vary from person to person and situation to situation.

Bonus for McCrystal offering his narration of the introduction and conclusion. Still, the book is not always balanced. Some leaders he only provides some surface level information, but for others, he will go very in-depth, depending on his personal experiences (especially his recollections of Martin Luther King and his personal struggles in dealing with Zarqawi). If nothing else, this book now makes me want to read Plutarch, perhaps sensing that that classic work might be superior to this one. This is a good book and one that leaders should read at least once, but do not think this is the end-all/be-all for leadership books.

[R · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF Pages Read 191/408

Leaders: Myth and Reality has a good premise for discussing leadership: Let's take a bunch of historical figures and discuss how they lead. Let's use them to talk about the myths people build around famous leaders. The problem is that, if you don't know the chosen individuals and their histories before going into this, then I'm not sure you're going to get much out of it.

Each "discussion" of a leader is little more than a whirlwind biography that covers the person's whole life. No special attention is payed to how that person lead. That makes it incredibly hard to follow along if you don't have a strong image of who these people were.

I made it half way through and, in that time, the book covered: Robert E. Lee, Walt Disney, Coco Chanel, Albert Einstein, Leonard Bernstein, Maximilian Robespierre, and Abu Musab Al-Zarqwai. Of those seven, I only had a working knowledge of Robert E. Lee and Walt Disney. As for the rest, if I even knew who they were, it was only because of the things they did or discovered. I did not have an image of who they were as people.

That made trying to muddle through mini-biographies on these people more headache-inducing than illuminating. For example, I knew Maximilian Robespierre was heavily involved in the french revolution and that he did a lot to make it bloodier than it needed to be. I didn't know much beyond that, though, and I'm left feeling baffled about what I was supposed to learn from his chapter. It was simply too short and light on the details for me to learn anything.

By contrast, I did gain a bit from Robert E. Lee's chapter. The Civil War is covered extensively in American schools, so I had a strong working knowledge of the Myth that is Robert E. Lee. If I hadn't known who he was beforehand, I probably would have gained nothing which was the case with Leonard Bernstein. I had never even heard that name before and I struggled to follow along as the book jumped through his life.

All in all, a big history buff might get a lot from this as it puts leaders in context of their time and reality. All others will probably find it more boring that enlightening. My dyslexia makes it hard to follow a lot stories based in the middle east, so I gave up during the Abu Musab Al-Zarqwai chapter. I simply could not keep the places and names straight and figured that, if I wasn't enjoying the book by the half-way point, then it wasn't worth finishing.

[Brasukra Sudjana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting angle to the leadership literature, mainly pointing out that leadership might not be learned, emulated, or results-oriented. I also like the fact that the book speaks not only to leader-wannabes, but also to followers. I take the following three lessons:

1. You don't need to aim for a leadership position. Many leaders were selected, elected or appointed to their positions almost by accident. Martin Luther King, Zarqawi, Robespierre, Zheng He were clear cases. Einstein and Harriet Tubman never held leadership in any formal sense. Martin Luther couldn't have imagined that his ideas would catch on. Disney gambled that his ideas would find an audience. Coco Chanel started her business as a way to survive. Robert E. Lee was not even a general in the US Army when he resigned his commission and he wasn't the commanding General in the Confederate Army to start with.

2. It's more important to have an underlying foundation. This could be some skills (Chanel), vision or ideas (Disney, Martin Luther), a cause (Harriet Tubman, MLK, Zarqawi, Robespierre, Thatcher), personal approaches (Bernstein, Boss Tweed), or intellectual framework (Einstein), to be ready if it falls to you.

3. Effective and consistent leadership is a fickle point. Leaders will always have weaknesses, whether strategic, tactical, moral, interpersonal, intellectual, managerial, or any other thing. But their effectiveness would depend on circumstances, their followers, and their broader social groups and the negotiations with those groups.

[Jake · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is not a typical leadership analysis or self-improvement book - while that made it less helpful for me, the authors are upfront about that from the beginning.

The book itself is an interesting historical account of a dozen or so different types of leaders. It takes a very liberal definition of the term leader, which includes even Einstein because of his influence on the field of physics. While I don’t entirely agree with the broadness of the definition, it was worth reading a different perspective and fascinating to learn more about each of the individuals in the book. However, application of the lessons learned is quite lacking. For each individual, there is perhaps a few sentences at most of why they are understood to be leaders and the authors don’t always even tie their actions and leadership together. The final chapter is the only chapter that touches on lessons learned and, while it has a couple of interesting points, it primarily focuses on trying to remind readers that there is not a single definition or makeup for leaders. This is true, but surely with so much research into these individuals, the authors could have spent more time highlighting attributes that were helpful in different situations rather than solely pointing out that each was lucky to be in the situation and were only leaders because of being at the right place at the right time.

Still, i was able to think through some of these applications on my own and see how communication and leadership are so tied that one cannot lead without effectively communicating thoughts and ideas.

[Hans · Rating 3 out of 5]

Leadership is a challenging topic to tackle when there are hundreds of books all claiming to have captured its ever elusive essence. I picked this book up because I was impressed with GEN (R) McChrystal's previous book "Team of Teams" and thought I'd see what he had to say.

Using the biographical dialectic format GEN McChrystal illustrates the challenges of defining leaders by contrasting historical examples into leadership categories: Geniuses, Zealots, Heroes, Reformers etc. This is crucial to his thesis by first debunking a "one size fits all approach" to leadership. These examples each show how they were each effective Leaders in their own right by achieving results.

My overall impression of what the author was driving at is how Leadership is more nuanced than a list of character traits, achievements and power. The definition of Leadership the author provides being "A complex system of relationships between leaders and followers, in a particular context, that provides meaning to its members". Essentially leadership is about understanding, navigating and shaping the perceptions of followers in order to enable action and execute a shared vision. Makes it all sound like leadership is making one-self the protagonist of a collective narrative, becoming the symbol of that narrative's ideals and values and then shaping or adding to them by tapping into them through the hearts and minds of the followers.

[Alec · Rating 4 out of 5]

The General McChrystal takes a classical approach to leadership books by emulating the style of Plutarch's Lives, where the author presents famous individuals as case studies from which the reader is to glean any useful leadership character traits or attributes. The book diverts from Plutarch's style in several notable ways, for instance not all the leaders actions presented are worthy to emulate and many of the leaders are outright fowl people overall. Two such infamous individuals are New York political miscreant Boss Tweed and zealous Jihadist Abu Al Quasim Al Zahrawi. McChrystal does not promote these individuals style of leadership, instead he uses them as examples of how even immoral people can make history. McChrystal also delves into more venerable leaders like Martin Luther King, Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther, and Walt Disney. Even these leaders are taken from their marbled pedestal to demonstrate that leaders are not the fabled visionaries that bark down orders to subordinates, instead they are symbols within a a complex dynamic system that is constantly reacting and acting within a given time and environment. I appreciate his application of dynamic systems theory and chaos theory to leadership and I think it would be a good read for any person wanting to understand leadership in a real world context instead of the typical formulaic analysis offered by most contemporary leadership writers.

[Maureen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was a disappointment. I agree with another commenter who said the book would have been better structured had McCrystal and his co-authors selected key attributes and then provided detailed stories and examples of each, proving their points. Instead, they wrote up vignettes of 13 leaders, usually juxtaposing two together, and then provided a short analysis afterwards. Then, after all 13 were done, they attempted a more comprehensive analysis and reasoned that some of their initial conceptions were wrong, and went back to revise their framework, leaving me confused.

Bottom line, what I took away from the book was that leaders are less about their strengths, the goals they share with their followers and their success at achieving them than about how they were able to symbolize something for their followers given their particular place in time. That explains why several of the so-called leaders in the book were technically losers at what they set out to accomplish.

An interesting book nevertheless. My favorite part was about Harriett Tubman, the abolitionist. I never knew that this former slave had not only escaped horrid enslavement, but risked her life time and again to go back down south and spirit out the rest of her family as well as other slaves, using the Underground Railroad to get them out. Makes me want to find a book about HER.

[Chad Manske · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unlike other McChrystal book offerings, this work—co-written with Jason Mangone and Jeff Eggers—uses Plutarch’s Lives as a foundation for a biographical leadership study attempting to parse leadership myths from realities. In so doing they tackle pairs of famous people, ascribing leadership attributes to the conduct of their lives to communicate their thesis. The pairs—Walt Disney and Coco Chanel, Maximilian Robespierre and Abu Musab al Zarqawi, Boss Tweed and Margaret Thatcher, and finally, Martin Luther and Martin Luther King Jr.—are portrayed in depth, with a short comparison to close out each chapter. They also discuss younger McChrystal’s hero, Robert E. Lee, and resolve that through this journey he probably should not have been so idolized. The prologue to the book previews and defines the three myths used as a sieve throughout the book and revisited in the epilogue, and are called the Formulaic, Attribution and Results Myths. They debunk these myths in conclusion and opine that leadership depends upon the situation, context, and leaders involved in a dynamic interplay. A great read!

[S · Rating 3 out of 5]

“No leader, or hero, exists independent of the context beyond their control...Leadership is not magic, and it is an alluring illusion that there are individual heroes. Rather, the apparent magic stems from the alignment of the right person at the right time, surrounded by a group of people who both enable their activities and find meaning in what someone like [them] offers...What we call “leadership” is often some combination of the leader’s actions, along with serendipity or other contextual factors that make for a positive result.”

About 80% of this book was a history of various leaders and their times, modelled after Plutarch’s Lives. But as interesting as that may have been, the real gem - and what made it completely worthwhile - was the last two chapters analyzing myths of leadership propagated in today’s culture. A recognition that leaders are deeply entwined and dependent on the historical context and broader ecosystem they find themselves in. And even more importantly that it’s the followers who create the leader...