How Great Leaders Think: the Art of Reframing uses compelling, contemporary examples to show how more complex thinking is the key to better leadership. Leaders who understand what's going on around them see what they need to do to achieve the results they want. Bolman and Deal's influential four-frame model of leadership and organizations—developed in their bestselling book, Reframing Organizations: Artistry Choice and Leadership—offers leaders an accessible guide for understanding four major aspects of organizational life: structure, people, politics, and culture. Tapping into the complexity enables leaders to decode the messy world in which they live, see more options, tell better stories, and find strategies that are more effective. Case examples of leaders like Jeff Bezos at Amazon, Howard Schultz at Starbucks, Tony Hsieh at Zappos, Ursula Burns at Xerox, and the late Steve Jobs at Apple provide concrete lessons that readers can put to use in their own leadership. The book's lessons include:

• How to use structural tools to organize teams and organizations for better results
• How to build motivation and morale by aligning organizations and people
• How to map the terrain and build a power base to navigate the political dynamics in organizations
• How to develop a leadership story that shapes culture, provides direction, and inspires commitment to excellence

LEE G. BOLMAN holds the Marion Block Missouri Chair in Leadership at the Bloch School of Management, University of Missouri–Kansas City. With Terrence Deal, Bolman is coauthor of the bestselling book Reframing Organizations, now in its 5th edition. For twenty years, Bolman taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

TERRENCE E. DEAL is the founder of the Deal Leadership Institute and has served on the faculties of Stanford, Harvard, Vanderbilt, and the University of Southern California. He is the author or coauthor of twenty-seven books, including the bestseller Corporate Cultures, as well as numerous articles on organizations, change, and leadership.

Preface vii

Acknowledgments ix

Part 1 Leadership in Four Dimensions 1

1 Introduction: The Power of Reframing 3

Part 2 Structural Leadership 21

2 Getting Organized 23

3 Organizing Groups and Teams 37

Part 3 Human Resource Leadership 49

4 Leading People 51

5 Seeing Ourselves as Others See Us 63

Part 4 Political Leadership 77

6 The Leader as Politician 79

7 The Leader as Warrior and Peacemaker 91

Part 5 Symbolic Leadership 105

8 The Leader as Magician 107

9 Seeking Soul in Teams 119

Part 6 Improving Leadership Practice 129

10 Reframing in Action 131

11 Images of Leadership: Can Crooked Kites Fly? 145

12 Leadership and Change 159

13 Searching for Soul: Leadership Ethics 175

14 Great Leaders, Great Stories 187

Appendix: Leadership Orientations 195

Notes 201

The Authors 213

Index 215