Book Review: The Shaping of an Effective Leader - Gayle D. Beebe

Gayle D. Beebe, The Shaping of an Effective Leader: Eight Formative Principles of Leadership, InterVarsity Press, 2011 Few people will ever be presidents of universities or CEO’s of companies. More likely people will run their own small business and the team necessary to make it successful. More likely people will manage a team to make their division successful. At the university, perhaps some will move up the ranks to department chair or even dean. Gayle Beebe, president of Westmont College, writes with top leadership in mind, however, his book, The Shaping of an Effective Leader: Eight Formative Principles of Leadership is a valuable read for those in leadership, particularly in some management capacity. I was not so interested in this book after reading the subtitle. Regressing to the eighties and nineties self-help era – Can anything really be broken down so neatly as to fit in eight principles? Leadership writers have moved beyond the simple steps and have recognized the complexity and nuances of postmodernity, yet still, having known many good things to come out of Westmont and Spring Arbor, where Beebe was president before, I decided to give the book a chance. Beebe dedicates the majority of the content of his book to summarizing what he learned from mentors, particularly indebted to management guru, Peter Drucker. Beebe does indeed break his leadership scheme into eight pieces consecutively growing into a pyramid. What the pyramid shows, however is the basis for basing management around the people and the team. I like that Beebe holds high expectations for his executive team, and all-the-more for himself as a leader. At first glance, I got the impression that Beebe hoped for the type of leader who took charge by control. Rather, Beebe’s leader is one who takes control by receiving the charge – the charge of responsibility, the charge of those serving on his or her team, and the charge to contribute something meaningful. This kind of leader recognizes that an organization exists for a mission and the mission drives the responsibility. The leader requires clarity of mission and receives the charge for leading the organization to meet that mission. A leader is always necessary, but a leader gains that responsibility by synthesizing the contributions of his or her team to meet the responsibility of the organization’s mission. A leader of this type listens and leverages each member of the team’s unique contribution as it relates to the organization’s mission. Finally, the leader sees his or her own value in what can be contributed personally to society. This is done by both believing in the mission of the organization, and by finding ways to apply and self-differentiate, even from the organization, in a way that one can pour constructively into society. Beebe still outlines eight principles, narrowing leadership into manageable bites. But his synthesis of Drucker and others are not leadership doctrine, but the results of anecdotes of a life leading and being mentored by even greater leaders.