Beyond Counterfeit Leadership: How You Can Become a More Authentic Leader

by Warren Bennis

In the history of the modern company, would-be leaders have often been seduced by the quick-fix, counterfeit side of management in an effort to save face or make short-term gains. Even more often, world-weary "plantation" managers are often seen sipping lemonade on the verandah of their palatial offices while the workers in the field live on slave wages. In this insightful social and business commentary, Shelton applies the artful background of classic literature to contrast ideal leadership with contemporary hucksters who are seduced by their own public relations campaigns and who wade through fraud and deception to manipulate their followers. He invites readers to see beyond the shams and become authentic leaders themselves.

242 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1992

About the author

Warren Gamaliel Bennis is an American scholar, organizational consultant and author, widely regarded as a pioneer of the contemporary field of Leadership Studies. Bennis is University Professor and Distinguished Professor of Business Administration and Founding Chairman of The Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California.

“His work at MIT in the 1960s on group behavior foreshadowed -- and helped bring about -- today's headlong plunge into less hierarchical, more democratic and adaptive institutions, private and public,” management expert Tom Peters wrote in 1993 in the foreword to Bennis’ An Invented Life: Reflections on Leadership and Change.

Management expert James O’Toole, in a 2005 issue of Compass, published by Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, claimed that Bennis developed “an interest in a then-nonexistent field that he would ultimately make his own -- leadership -- with the publication of his ‘Revisionist Theory of Leadership’ in Harvard Business Review in 1961.” O’Toole observed that Bennis challenged the prevailing wisdom by showing that humanistic, democratic-style leaders better suited to dealing with the complexity and change that characterize the leadership environment.