Book Review: Leading the Board

There are a great many books on lead­er­ship and man­age­ment, and rel­a­tively few on the role of chair­man. Lead­ing the Board, writ­ten by Andrew and Nada Kak­abadse, is an excel­lent book on the latter.

The book is well researched but, thank­fully, is not heavy on method­olog­i­cal detail and foot­notes, mak­ing it an easy read. It’s also  won­der­fully bal­anced between mod­ern real life exam­ples and the his­tory of cer­tain man­age­ment concepts.

The book defines the chairman’s role well, dis­tin­guish­ing it from that of pres­i­dent or chief exec­u­tive offi­cer. It details the ele­ments of an effec­tive chair, and elab­o­rates on how the cur­rent Amer­i­can and Euro­pean board mod­els inhibit and enable the role. These ele­ments are divided up into the “six dis­ci­plines of world-class chair­men”, and each is given com­pre­hen­sive coverage.

This book isn’t for every­one, but it is an very rel­e­vant book for cur­rent or aspir­ing chair­men and other board mem­bers. If you fit into either of those cat­e­gories, I strongly rec­om­mend you pur­chase this book from Ama­zon.