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Leadership and Performance Beyond Expectations

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BOOK REVIEW-LEADERSHIP AND PERFORMANCE BEYOND EXPECTATIONS Bass, B. (1985). Leadership and Performance Beyond Expectations. New York: The Free Press. It is one of the best leadership books I ever read so far. “Leadership and Performance Beyond Expectations” by Bernard M. Bass, published by The Free Press in 1985. It has been two decades since the book published, and some might says that the word “expectations” used as the title may be only applicable during that era, but for me, most of the ideas are still relevant and adaptable till present; as to agree with the a statement made by Abraham Zaleznik, Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus at the Havard Business School on this publication, “This book will recast leadership …show more content…

From all the insights and valuable information gathered, the author later presents a Leadership Questionnaire on the last part of this book. The questionnaire was hopefully become a measuring tool for self-appraisal and evaluation of both transactional and transformational traits. Ethical The author did mention on the morality issue. As quoted by Burns (1978), transformational leadership has moral whereby the leader is guided by ethical principles such as respect for human dignity and equality of human rights. A moral leadership will serve the organization‟s well-being better in the long run. That is, the transformations that deals with fulfilment of real needs, proven benefited to the organization. The personal values goes hand-in-hand with the integrity of leaders and will somewhat influence how he lead and run the show.

Immoral leadership was also cited in this book. It argued that the leadership is immoral once the followers‟ needs were not authentic, and their need levels were elevated by the leader. An example of Aldof Hitler‟s leadership was discussed as to show how unethical leadership had given a negative impact not just to the country but also at the expense of the German society.

Hitler‟s leadership did promote immorality and encouraging brutality in order to achieve goals, and was globally censured. The author

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