Creating Leaderful Organizations: How to Bring Out Leadership in Everyone.

In Creating Leaderful Organizations: How to Bring Out Leadership in Everyone, Joseph A. Raelin proposes steps for organizations to move from autocratic leadership to complete site-based management. Raelin, who holds the Asa Knowles Chair of Practice-Oriented Education at Northeastern University, works as a management consultant and is a popular speaker on using work-based learning methods.

His book is divided into two parts. Part 1 introduces the philosophy behind leaderful practice while Part 2 describes the process for moving individuals and organizations toward leaderful practice. The latter provides a thorough discussion of the "four C's of leaderful practice" (concurrent leadership, collective leadership, collaborative leadership and compassionate leadership) that are necessary for shared leadership. Tables, figures and a leadership questionnaire are interspersed at appropriate intervals, offering useful visuals for moving toward the type of organization espoused by Raelin.

Examples from high-recognition companies such as UPS, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, Harley-Davidson and Dell Computers are included as models of shared leadership. Self-reflections shared by individuals as they discover how to move from conventional leadership to shared leadership are beneficial to the reader who desires to assess his or her own leaderful predisposition.

Initially I planned to scan this book, but I was drawn in because of the format. While Raelin does not specifically write about school organizations, his book is well suited for school administrators and soon-to-be administrators who must learn to share leadership if they want to be successful.

(Creating Leaderful Organizations: How to Bring Out Leadership in Everyone by Joseph A. Raelin, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco, Calif., 2003, 288 pp. with index, $22.95 softcover)

Lylia King

Principal, Cleburne Intermediate School, Cleburne, Texas