January 2026
Beginner to intermediate
464 pages
12h 43m
English
book
Practicing Organization Development, 5th Edition
by William J. Rothwell, Jacqueline M. Stavros, Steven H. Cady
Content preview from Practicing Organization Development, 5th Edition
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CHAPTER FOURBeing an Effective Leader Starts with Knowing Thyself
Jacqueline M. Stavros and Donald R. James
Leadership has been one of the most written about topics globally. Hundreds of books are written on the subject every year (Ashkenas and Manville 2024). At the time of this writing, Harvard Business Review’s last two issues were on How to Lead When Everyone’s Exhausted (Spring 2024) and Leadership: How to Lead Now (Summer 2024). There are many definitions of the term too. The commonality among the definitions is leadership is about leading, which is motivating, inspiring, influencing, and guiding others around a vision or goal. Leadership is fundamental to the organization development (OD) field because it is integral to any type of change (Shufutinsky 2023).
This chapter will focus on how to be an effective leader. To lead others through change, a leader must first understand and lead themselves. According to Rebecca Knight (2024, 62), “leadership is a process of self-development.” Her research supports that highly effective leaders are capable of motivating and inspiring those around them because they are deeply self-aware, continually learning, and growing. These traits allow them to connect and build trust with others.
This chapter captures the leadership self-assessment journey of a CEO in the highly competitive automotive industry whose primary responsibility is leading change and for driving the vision and strategic direction in his organization. It highlights ...
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I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.