The Three Levels of Leadership Book - Development as a leader.

About The Book

This page explains who The Three Levels of Leadership is for, what it offers and why it’s unusual among the many leadership books available.  It tells you about the book’s new ideas, its practical easy to read style, its downloadable tools and how it reveals the key to what Jim Collins called Level 5 Leadership in his book, Good to Great. 

Book Details

The Three Levels of Leadership: How to Develop Your Leadership Presence, Knowhow and Skill by James Scouller (ISBN 9781852526818), published by Management Books 2000, May 2011. E-book version for iPads available.  If you want to know how to buy either the print or e-book version, click the red Where to Buy button (top right of page).  If you'd like to hear James Scouller introducing the book, click the video at the bottom of the page.

Who Is "The Three Levels of Leadership" For?

• Experienced leaders who want to be better at what they do and need a modern leadership manual to help them quicken their growth. 
• People aspiring to level 5 leadership who want to work on what Jim Collins called the leader’s “inner development,” but don’t know how. 
• Students confused by the differing leadership theories on offer who sense there must be a way of drawing them together in one “master” leadership model.
• Younger people starting out in their careers who want to grow their leadership knowhow and skill but also realise they need to develop their leadership presence and emotional intelligence (EQ).
• Leaders who want to apply the ideals of Servant Leadership and Authentic Leadership in action.

What Makes It An Unusual Leadership Book?

• Clear, easy to read leadership book, with a practical writing style.
• Compact; there is no padding.  Every page matters. You won’t have to hunt for the useful stuff.
• Fresh new thinking on leadership:
  • A new practical definition of leadership that makes a surprising difference.
  • A redefining of the leader’s purpose that accepts the need to share leadership, while spelling out the one responsibility the leader can't give away.
  • A model of leadership effectiveness that combines the best of the old theories while addressing their one big weakness: inattention to the leader’s psychology.
  • A breakthrough model of the psyche, the first for 75 years, drawing on the latest thinking and research from psychology and neuroscience.
  • Incorporates self-mastery – a previously overlooked key for growing your emotional intelligence (EQ), leadership presence, authenticity and flexibility.
• Practical science-backed techniques and tools for developing your self-mastery.  Note: you can download some of the tools from this website by going to the Tool Downloads page.
• Lets you see your learning priorities clearly.  Helps you figure out which leadership behaviours you need to work on first and understand the supporting knowhow and skills you need to learn.
• Turns the abstract ideals of Servant Leadership and Authentic Leadership into a practical reality.

What Does It Have To Say?

The book has two parts.

Part One comprises chapters 1 to 4 and presents the foundational ideas.  Its first aim is to demystify leadership and clarify the purpose of a leader.  It promotes the idea of shared leadership, but affirms there is one responsibility that belongs uniquely to the leader.  Its second aim is to introduce The Three Levels of Leadership model.  Here’s a brief outline of the contents:

• A new, practical definition of leadership.
• The simple, but perhaps surprising purpose of a leader.
• A one-page summary of the many older leadership theories that try to explain the keys to a leader’s effectiveness.
• A brief look at the fatal flaws of these leadership theories.
• A new leadership model: The Three Levels of Leadership.  A model that combines the old leadership theories while addressing the two issues they ignore: leadershippresence and the leader’s psychology.
• Detail on the three levels: Public, Private and Personal Leadership. Public and Private leadership are the two behavioural levels – they are what you do around other people.  Public Leadership is about influencing the attitudes and behaviour of several people at once.  Private leadership is about one-to-one handling of group members.  Personal leadership is about your technical and psychological self-development.  It’s the key to developing your emotional intelligence (EQ), presence, knowhow and skill.  It’s also the key to what Jim Collins called the “inner development” of a leader to Level 5 Leadership.
• Lists of the key public and private leadership behaviours.
• Two self-assessment exercises to help you decide which leadership behaviours to work on first.

Part Two covers chapters 5 to 10.  It builds on part one by going into the detail of personal leadership.  Its focus is on how you can grow your emotional intelligence (EQ), leadership presence, knowhow and skill.  Thus, it looks closely at how to work on the three elements of personal leadership: Technical Knowledge & Skills, Attitude Towards Others and Self-Mastery.  Most of the book is devoted to part two.  Again, here is a short outline of the contents:

• An explanation of what presence is, how it shows itself and how it’s different to charisma. 
• The seven qualities of presence and how everyone can express their unique presence by practising self-mastery.
• The technical knowhow every leader needs and how to gain it. 
• The skills that support the public and private leadership behaviours, what you can do to learn them and how they connect to emotional intelligence (EQ). 
• A self-assessment exercise to help you see your technical knowledge and leadership skills learning priorities.
• Why the right attitude to other people is so important.  A new model that explains what this attitude involves.  Plus real-life examples.
• Why some leaders don’t display the right attitude and what you can do to avoid the same happening to you.
• The importance of vision.  How it is different to mission.  How to create a shared vision.
• How and why self-mastery develops the right attitude and behaviour towards others.
• A new model of the psyche to support the practice of self-mastery – a model drawing on the latest thinking from psychology and neuroscience.
• The practice of self-mastery: the principles of personal change, the obstacles you are likely to meet and how to overcome them.  Plus six practical techniques to help you work on self-mastery and, where necessary, scientific data to support them. 
• A final chapter summarising and tying together the book’s key themes so you can see the big picture having read the detail in previous chapters.

E-book Version

The Three Levels of Leadership is available in print form from online and high street retailers.  It is also available as an e-book for iPads and PCs from the publisher, Management Books 2000.  Click the red Where to Buy button (top right of page) for more details.

Want To Hear More?

Just click the video below to hear the author introducing the book.