How Great Leaders Think:The Art of Reframing

The key to better leadership is better thinking. Leaders who can reframe a situation or a challenge by looking at it from multiple perspectives are able to achieve a clearer view of what’s going on around them and understand what they need to do to achieve the results they want.

Our summary of How Great Leaders Think: The Art of Reframing, by Lee G. Bolman and Terrence E. Deal, explains how to improve your ability to see more and do more by understanding four major dimensions of organizational life: structure, people, politics, and culture.

Bolman and Deal are also the authors of the best-seller, Reframing Organizations. Bolman is co-author of Reframing Academic Leadership, and he holds the Marion Block Missouri Chair in Leadership at the Bloch School of Management, University of Missouri-Kansas City. Deal has served on the faculties of Stanford, Harvard, Vanderbilt, and the University of Southern California. He is the author or co-author of 27 books, including the best-seller Corporate Cultures.

This summary’s lessons include:

• How to use structural tools to organize teams and organizations for better results;
• How to build motivation and morale by aligning organization and people;
• How to map the political terrain and build a power base to navigate the partisan struggles in organizations; and,

How to develop a leadership story that shapes culture, provides meaning, and inspires people toward a shared purpose.