Annotated Bibliography

Conger, Jay A. Inspiring Others: The Language of Leadership. The Executive 5.1 (1991): 31-45. Print

               

  In this article Conger speaks about the importance of communicating your mission as a leader. He thinks that the ability to properly communicate your message can make you an effective leader, and he believes that people can learn how to be effective leaders. He believes that the business world has lost the ability to effectively describe their mission, and that leaders are too emotionless. He states that the language of business can be broken up into two categories, framing and rhetorical crafting. He describes framing as defining the purpose of the organization or the message. Rhetorical crafting is described as the ability to use symbolic language in order to give power to the message. I think that this is an effective article because he uses specific examples of cases where being able to effectively communicate your message changed people’s perceptions of certain leaders.

Denning, Stephen. The Secret Language of Leadership: How Leaders Inspire Others Through Narrative.    

               San Francisco: Jossey-Bass: A Wiley Company, 2007. Print

 Denning's book is all about leaders connect and engage with their audiences. He believes that traditional approaches to leadership don’t work. He believes that creating enduring enthusiasm is the most important thing to becoming an effective leader. I think that his book was the best out of all the things that I looked at. It was very easy to understand and he gave a detailed examples. He believes that leadership isn’t an innate gift and that “once the hidden patterns of the language of leadership are made explicit, leadership becomes accessible to anyone.”

Quirk, Michael P. and Patricia M. Fandt. The Second Language of Leadership. New Jersey: Lawrence      

           Erlbaum Associates, 2000. Print    

  

This book takes a completely different approach than any of my other sources. They look at leadership in itself as a language, and compares learning how to be an effective leader to learning a second language. They believe that by knowing who you are as a person you can become an effective leader. By improving your personality they believe you can be a leader by leaning on your strengths and managing your weaknesses. I think that their book is effective because it looks at learning leadership skills in an unique light, though I don’t necessarily believe everything that they say.

Soder, Roger. The Language of Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass: A Wiley Company, 2001. Print

             

   Soder’s book is about the relationship between language and effective leadership, in particular the ability to persuade others. He kind of approaches it in a political manner and his book demonstrates how to be an effective leader within the context of democracy. He shows how to use ethical persuasion to become a successful leader. The strengths of his book is that he points out the role of morals in leading. I also think that his book stands out from other material on this topic because he talks about what happens when things go wrong, he doesn’t try to act like if you listen to what he says everything will go perfectly.