Inclusive Leadership: The Essential Leader-Follower Relationship

This landmark book, by Edwin P. Hollander, a noted organizational social psychologist and long-time contributor to leadership research and practice, highlights the leader-follower relationship as central to effective leadership. Inclusive Leadership is a process of active followership emphasizing follower needs and expectations, with the guiding principle of "Doing things with people, not to people," in a two-way influence relationship. The book provides strong theoretical and empirical guidance for leadership development and includes many of Hollander’s key original papers. Each is updated in a chapter with his new reflective commentary, including those on "Interdependence," "Women and Leadership," "Power and Leadership," "Legitimacy," "Ethical Challenges," "Idiosyncrasy Credit," and "Civil Liberties." Six new chapters begin with an "Overview of Inclusive Leadership," identifying distinctive concepts and practices, and an "Historical Background." There also are new chapters on such topics as "Applications," "Presidential Leadership," and "College and University Leadership." It concludes with "Lessons from Experience,"a revealing "Afterword" on his career, and comprehensive Bibliography.

Enriching our practical understanding of the leader-follower relationship, with many real-world examples, this book should be a basic addition to anyone’s library on leadership. Students of leadership, management, organizational psychology and behavior, business, sociology, education, political science, and public policy, will find it informative about successful practices of "Inclusive Leadership," and their applications to leadership events.

Dr. Hollander has been CUNY Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Baruch College and the Graduate Center since 1989. A longtime Professor at SUNY Buffalo, he also served there as Provost of Social Sciences and Administration, and was the founding director of the Doctoral Program in Social/Organizational Psychology. His BS in Psychology was earned at Case Western Reserve and his Ph.D. at Columbia University. Subsequently, he taught at Carnegie Mellon, Washington (St. Louis), and American University (Washington). He has held visiting appointments as a Fulbright Professor at Istanbul University, an NIMH Senior Fellow at the Tavistock Institute in London, and as a faculty member at Wisconsin, Harvard, Oxford, and the Institute of American Studies in Paris, among others. He also served as Study Director of the Committee on Ability Testing at the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Hollander's major interests have focused on group and organizational leadership, innovation, and autonomy. His current research is directed toward understanding follower expectations and perceptions of leaders, and their consequences to the relationship. Specifically, he has recently been studying the sources of evaluation of leaders, including gender. His books include Leaders, Groups, and Influence (1964), Leadership Dynamics (1978), and Principles and Methods of Social Psychology (4 ed., 1981), and he co-edited the series Current Perspectives in Social Psychology (4 ed., 1976) with Raymond Hunt, and the companion volume Classic Contributions to Social Psychology (1972). He also is author of many chapters and papers on leadership.