The Leadership Dance: Pathways to Extraordinary Organizational Effectiveness. Niagara Falls, NY. The Center for Self-Organizing Leadership, 2002. By Richard N. Knowles The power of The Leadership Dance emerges from the way that the Dr. Knowles combines a depth of practicality with depth in theoretical expansion. Both the practical hands-on leader as well as the visionary leader will find direction and guidance in this powerful book on how to improve organizational effectiveness. The Leadership Dance describes some very useful tools for bringing about constructive organizational change, based on a view of organizations as living systems. The 'Process Enneagram', which lies at the core of the book, is a remarkably effective and compact tool for mapping the elements needed to bring about desired change in a way that is transparent for all stakeholders. It will be valuable to anyone concerned with organizational effectiveness.

This book explores theory developed from experience. The format of the book is basically a recall of events leading to a new leadership theory, theory expanded into operational models and those models applied to the practice of leadership. Dr. Knowles does a brilliant job of combining many sources of theory and practice into constantly developing examples that make the two sides of the perspective come together well. The author first creates a personal contextual picture through a fascinating recall of exciting events in the chemical industry that shaped his perspective on leadership. Right through the book there is an honest discourse of the author's own inner struggle to make the paradigm shift from being a command and control leader to having a top leadership role in a self-organizing enterprise, one where the three forms of leadership strategic, operational and self-organizing have come into the proper balance. Dr. Knowles shows how self-organization can be working effectively all the time. And it's not just theory. For, as he shows in this book, he actually did it himself. Anyone who wants to be a truly effective leader must learn to master this balance, The Leadership Dance.