Acknowledgments
As my readers might expect, having now become somewhat familiar with the leaderful perspective, I believe pulling off a project like this requires a number of leaders in addition to myself. Aspiring to be leaderful in my own life, I wish to acknowledge those who played an important part in the evolution of the leaderful concept.
Unfortunately, most of these leaders have to go unnamed because, having affected me in their everyday encounters, they are too numerous to name or to sometimes even recollect. Yet, whether through their example or through their argumentation, they have genuinely shaped the articulation of leaderful practice. There is a second unnamed group of leaders who have gone even further by agreeing to participate in this manuscript. These are my many graduate students who in taking my course on leadership have willingly shared their journals with me and have generously given me permission to quote them in exchange for their anonymity. If the account to follow succeeds in its practical nature enriched by real-life examples from practicing managers and employees and their leadership struggles, it is largely thanks to the personal generosity of these students.
There are some individuals who extended particular dedication to the craftsmanship of this book. First, the application of my leadership course to the content of this book was significantly impacted by the facilitators who staffed the course. For little or no monetary compensation, these facilitators moderated the learning teams organized to support the course and lent their wise counsel to the development of the traditions that eventually founded the leaderful concept. These facilitators are Tracey Madden, Louis Leyes, John McGillivray, Brenda Reed, Ken Chadwick, Dan Kerls, Laura Cannata, Dan Collins, and Fr. Michael Burns, of Edinburgh, Scotland, the last of whom served as a facilitator over two offerings of the course and who has continued to share his insights on leadership with me ever since.
I have also experimented with my leaderful ideas with participants in several so-called executive breakfast series. A number of individuals have helped me coordinate these series, namely, Sims Cooledge, Julie Whitmore, Phil DiChiara, and Mark Braun. I would also like to thank Bill Gjetson and Toby Casey for allowing me to challenge the executive staff at Caterpillar Paving Products with the novel implications of leaderful practice, and Colm O’Comartun and Brian Kane at Boston College’s Irish Institute for giving me a platform to share my ideas on leadership through many workshops with their visitors from Ireland and Northern Ireland.
At Boston College, I benefited enormously from a research incentive grant awarded through the auspices of Dean Helen Peters and Assistant Dean Amy La Combe. I was also privileged to work with a superb research assistant, Carolina Charrie from Uruguay, over the full two years of the book’s development. The many journal extracts used in these pages were largely hand selected by Carolina, as was the preparation of the graphics that spice up the text. In addition, the complete family of staff, participants, and alumni affiliated with the Leadership for Change graduate program have shaped my thinking about leadership over the program’s nine-year history. It has been a pure privilege to have been associated with this dynamic program through these years.
My appreciation also goes out to the entire Berrett-Koehler family whose members have demonstrated leaderful contact with me at every stage of the publication process. Jeevan Sivasubramaniam has been my supportive main contact person and Steve Piersanti my insightful editor. I am also grateful to the reviewers of my original manuscript, especially Jan Nickerson, who took the extraordinary step of visiting me at my house to supplement her insightful and bountiful written comments with a full verbal explanation and dialogue.
I am now privileged to have begun a new adventure at Northeastern University as the Asa S. Knowles Chair of Practice-Oriented Education. I look forward to promoting leaderful practice in my new environment headed by already leaderful President, Richard Freeland.
And finally, I am deeply grateful to my family for putting up with my perpetual experiments in leaderful practice, not to mention with my time away from them in preparing this book.