There is a long history of presenting stories of leaders and their great challenges as a way of illustrating leadership theories and concepts, and it remains a favorite approach in teaching about leadership. In fact, this is the way that the study of leadership began many centuries ago, with stories of the exploits and qualities of mythic leaders from Greece and the Orient. Snapshots of Great Leadership continues this tradition, and updates it, with this exceptional collection of stories of great leaders, some well known, others less so. These cases of leaders and leadership are indeed brief snapshots, but each is clearly embedded within leadership theory. While Snapshots contains stories of great historical leaders (e.g., Churchill, Gandhi, Lincoln), there are more contemporary leaders included such as Mary Kay Ash and Mark Zuckerberg, and some who are relatively unknown. In addition to the great leaders who championed positive social change and led nations to greatness, there are snapshots of bad leaders and leadership (e.g., Hitler, Idi Amin). This suggests that we can learn a great deal from the good and successful leaders, but also learn what we, as followers of leaders, and leaders ourselves, must avoid. Participants of the webinar will explore various types of leadership the examination of select snapshots of great leadership.

Snapshots of Great Leadership is a book of stories. Most of the stories describe great leaders who accomplished amazing feats such as creating, preserving or changing a nation or industry, or saving a group of people from exploitation or annihilation. A few of these stories describe bad leaders who brought death, destruction or ruin to scores or thousands of people. In retrospect, the disastrous effects of these bad leaders are no less astounding than the incredible accomplishments of the great leaders. Although the goals of these individuals were often quite different, the leadership processes they used were frequently similar. In this book, Howell describes who these leaders were, how they developed, what they accomplished, and how they did it. For each leader, he refers to existing leadership theories to help explain their leadership attributes, tactics and behavior as well as their effects on others and their environment. Snapshots of Great Leadership includes a beginning chapter that briefly describes the major leadership theories included in most leadership textbooks. Following each leadership Snapshot, Howell also describes how that leader’s attributes and behavior relate to the different leadership theories. The webinar is designed to introduce the listeners to several of these leaders and to begin to answer the following questions: