Book review: The 8 Dimensions of Leadership: DiSC Strategies for Becoming a Better Leader

Book review: The 8 Dimensions of Leadership: DiSC Strategies for Becoming a Better Leader

Introduction

This is a quotation from the book written by Jeffery Sugerman, Emma Wilhelm, and Mark Scullard. The book is an insightful and leadership developing book which tells how possessing strategic leadership skill is enough to lead a team towards success and that a good leader need various perspectives and skills (8dimensionofleadership.com, 2011).

Thesis of Book

“According the authors, one-directional leadership, despite working in certain situations, may be disastrous in many situations. That is why leaders must develop multidimensional strategic leadership skills to deal with real world circumstances.”

Discussion

Strategic leadership is about leading the team towards success and attaining the defined goals with techniques and strategies rather than acting randomly on a plan. Strategic leadership enables leaders and his/her team to achieve objectives which in the end help attaining the mission of an organization (Sugerman, et al. 2011). Authors of the book have acknowledged that leadership is a challenging and complex role for every individual, particularly when he/she has at the responsible position in an organization. Owing to such complexity, many leaders depend upon a single well developed skill and trait to lead their teams towards their goals.

The authors believe that depending upon sole leadership skill may work in certain situation, but it may fail in other circumstances as well. In order to lead their team strategically, they must learn new leadership behaviors and they should also learn to work beyond their spontaneous reaction when they are faced with the unexpected or novel obstacles. According to the authors, developing eight leadership behaviors is a kind of internal journey to discover their selves and to lead the team strategically (Sugerman, et al. 2011).

The eight leadership dimensions described by the authors in the book are following (Sugerman, et al. 2011) and have their own weaknesses and strengths:

In order to counter the one-dimension model of leadership recommendations and instructions given by many strategic leadership experts, authors of the book have shared self-assessing tool to evaluate personal leadership behavior. The authors have presented the DiSC® the personality assessment model of strategic leadership behavior. DiSC® is an acronym which abbreviates Dominance, influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness. With the help of these four poles, leaders become enable to self assess their existing leadership traits and behaviors and its status on the compass points ...