Book Review: The Spirit of Leadership

The Spirit of Leadership: Liberating the Leader in Each of Us by Harrison Owen is an amazing book! Its message is perhaps even more valid today as when it was written 28 years ago?

Harrison Owen writes that “leadership is not the exclusive property of the few or The One.” Leadership is, on the contrary, “a collective and constantly redistributed function.” “As long as leadership is viewed as the exclusive prerogative of the one or the few,” the relationships between leaders and followers will be “some form of passive dependency.”

What I particularly like is that Harrison Owen is fully aware of that there is “more going on than meets the eye.” His word for this is “Spirit.” He writes that it’s one of those “things” you know when you run into it, and you know when it is not there. What cannot be achieved by “formula” may be achieved by attention to the “flow of Spirit.” Structure “follows Spirit,” and to reverse the order is to “invite disaster.”

“To manage is to control; to lead is to liberate.” The leader’s work is not so much “telling people what to do” as it is “making connections and drawing out the implications.” There is no easy way of doing this. Encouraging “appropriate structure to emerge is a critical function of leadership.” The function of leadership is to “grow structure, not to impose it.” “Appropriate structure increases focus, while removing eddies, distractions, and obstacles.”

The leadership we need is available in all of us. It’s up to each of us to liberate the leader within.