Like many others, I have studied leadership through research and consulting to answer the question, “What makes an effective leader?” When I saw this title and Mohamed’s work, I realised that I had experienced both effective (good) and ineffective (bad) leaders in my personal life.
I often learned more from bad leaders who, generally, by ignorance more than intent, made bad decisions that demoralised individuals and decimated their organisations.
When we examined what makes an effective leader, we crafted the Leadership Code based on research from 15 leadership thought leaders who had written over 100 books and conducted over 3,000,000 leadership 360s. From this work, we identified five domains of effective leadership. Mohamed’s five perspectives and our five domains align, which confirms our work.
Finally, I like applying these ideas to myself and recognise that I (too) often exhibit too many of these dysfunctional bad behaviours.
I hope others find the book as helpful as I do.
Prof. Dave Ulrich
Rensis Likert, Professor of Business,
University of Michigan
Partner, The RBL Group (USA)