Leadership Solutions: The Pathway to Bridge the Leadership Gap.

Leadership, or the lack of leadership, is an ongoing concern for many organizations. In Leadership Solutions, Dr. David Weiss, Dr. Vince Molinaro, and Dr. Liane Davey challenge what they believe are the traditional views and approaches to building leadership capacity. Instead of focusing on building individual leaders whose leadership abilities rest upon their own charisma, Weiss, Molinaro, and Davey argue for a holistic leadership style that can be used as a source of competitive advantage for an organization. Leadership Solutions is a continuation of Weiss and Molinaro’s Leadership Gap (2005). In Leadership Gap, they argued that many organizations need to identify and address their leadership gaps to maximize their potential, but after further research into this area the authors discovered that it was difficult to pinpoint leadership gaps because useful metrics were not available. Leadership Solutions is an attempt to address that problem.

The book is divided into two sections: “Leadership” and “Solutions.” “Leadership” further explores the gap identified in Leadership Gap, along with the dimensions of leadership capacity for organizations and individuals. “Solutions” focuses on practical ways to address the leadership gap, including a copy of the authors’ Leadership Gap Analysis tool, designed to help organizations audit their own organizational practices with an eye to developing leadership capacity. The intended audience for this book is large. Everyone from executives and senior leaders to human resources professionals to academics are addressed. And because the needs of each section of the audience may vary, Weiss, Molinaro, and Davey designed to book to be read as a whole or in parts depending on the reader’s needs.

Although much of the language used in the book is business jargon, Weiss, Molinaro, and Davey use well-written and accessible illustrative stories to demonstrate their points. These stories help readers who are unfamiliar with business jargon to understand the larger point the authors are trying to make. These same readers, however, may feel as if they need to read Leadership Gap in order to fully understand much of what the authors are discussing, as they refer to it often throughout the text.