Leadership Agility: Five Levels of Mastery for Anticipating and Initiating Change Hardcover – Illustrated, October 20, 2006

A leadership masterpiece! Leadership Agility by Bill Joiner & Stephen Josephs is the first book that I have read that explains developmental levels of a leader, levels of agility we can reach. It is backed in research and many years of the authors executive coaching.This book that helped me find myself and peers so I can better relate to them. I appreciated the real world examples woven throughout!Some teasers:Level 1 Expert (~45% of leaders) - a hero, subject matter expert that solves key problems within their function, can assume others are wrongLevel 2 Achiever (~35% of leaders) - a hero, start to see outside their function, creates an environment where people want to be to contribute to significant outcome.Level 3 Catalyst (~5% of leaders) - start of post-heroic leadership. development of solutions that benefit multiple stakeholders, more at ease with change, solutions better with multiple viewpoints, opposing viewpoints are valid, "We see things as we are", “Who can we learn from” is a central question.Level 4 Co-creator (~4% of leaders) - Leadership as a form of service, learn from mistakes, mutual trust and collaboration, develops win-wins, high self awareness equals a greater capacity to stay with difficult feelings longer, greater capacity for experimenting, an owners mindsetLevel 5 Synergist (~1% of leaders) - Living life purpose on a global scale, deeply attuned themselves to people and sense energy dynamics, focus on the common good while considering conflicting shareholder views, tap all the senses and feel joy and wonder of being alive, meditation very common

My leadership coaching bookclub and I read this book and we all felt we really benefitted from it. This is a book that has a great deal of depth but is also very readable - something you often don't find in leadership development literature. My favorite chapter was "The 5 Eds." In it, Joiner details the same situation from the point of view of a CEO that is at different levels of adult development. The amazing thing about this chapter is not only seeing in real life, how each developmental level would appear and function but it's also been a great resource for clients. I can direct my clients to this book and chapter and all of a sudden they can understand how they might be limiting themselves by their current worldview and they can understand what expanding that worldview might allow for them. I've read Kegan's Immunity to Change and I believe that while both are valuable additions to the leadership literature, I leaned a lot more about how the different leadership levels look and function in the business world from Joiner's book. He has worked hard to create an important addition to the coaching and leadership development field that is truly enjoyable to read.

Solid resource, gives a somewhat different perspective as compared to other leadership development texts.

Real-Time Leadership provides rich and insightful ways to disentangle, understand, and leverage the colliding forces that emerge during challenging times. The authors' MOVE model is a simple mnemonic to help leaders ignite their powers of confidence and clarity so that they can lead with purpose and integrity when the stakes are high. BRAVO.Beth Masterman, PCC, JD, MA Psych, Certified Executive Coach

This is A quite interesting book, particularly for experts in leadership development. The five levels are wel explained. The book is at best for specialtists. I doubt if leaders will have the time to go through it till the end.

I started using Leadership Agility as a coaching tool about four years ago and have found it very helpful with many of my business clients. They understand the different levels of leadership very easily and the first few chapters of this book help them see that there is a leadership continuum along which they sit - which gives them a sense of how they have already changed as leaders and how they can improve going forward. The book itself is not so useful for the client who doesn't have the time to read or doesn't prefer to learn that way - but then we just explore the material in other ways. (discussion, outline notes, etc.) The fact that the authors were available to answer questions was especially helpful when I was first starting out with this book.

I heard about this book at a recent strategic planning workshop, one of the guest speakers referenced it in a dinner talk on leadership. Although it can feel a bit 'new agey' at times discussing some of the higher leadership levels, overall I found it to be a fascinating, insightful and above all helpful read. It accurately diagnosed my present leadership style (achiever), and recently I've been able to reflect and change some of my leadership behaviors. It has already led to a number of better outcomes in business meetings/projects and even personal relationships. I highly recommend this book for leaders, managers and all employees who hope to advance and grow in their careers.

"Terrific book with excellent case studies of individuals working different levels of leadership agility. They aren't necessarily levels, but more like areas, although the author states that you can advance from one to another. It may be best to stick with the one you're most comfortable with or try to move on. It's not entirely necessary to move up the levels to advance in your career. The book is more about solving problems and coming up with solutions based on different leadership styles. Completely engrossing and difficult to put down once I started reading it."