LOVED loved loved this book.

The writing had me captivated from the start to finish, and I found myself reading it almost straight through one sitting. I look forward to reading more by this author.

Nine Types of Leader is an interesting book on the characteristics and nature of leaders and James Ashton does a great job of pulling examples to reinforce the points and observations he makes. Leadership is the cornerstone of an organisation’s culture and has a huge impact on success. The study of leadership is an important exercise to arm the decision-makers in appointing or investing in leaders, or for those with their sights set on achieving a leadership level. The skillset of leaders has always been debatable and, as even this title suggests, there is no one way to define the appropriate leader for an organisation.

This book provides an excellent flow of scenarios and examples of leaders and the situations that brought them notoriety and the profile they gained. That is the main essence of the book and as I do enjoy reading about leaders from business, politics, community and war, where our history is full of many positive and negative examples of each, this is a great addition. This last year we have seen the poignant impact from leaders in power – many illustrating that leaders guide everyone through difficult times not exacerbate them.

The Nine Types of Leaders are: Alphas, Fixers, Sellers, Founders, Scions, Lovers, Campaigners, Diplomats and Humans.

At the end of each chapter for each type of leader is a short Brief, which is useful for a quick reminder. An example is:

ALPHAS IN BRIEF
Strengths: Visionary, energetic, inspiring, tough, traditional.
Weaknesses: Inflexible, narrow-minded, failure to listen, failure to adapt.
Suitability: Leading big, multinational companies with many moving parts, large workforces, disparate locations and regulatory challenges.
Where you will find them: In fewer boardrooms than you used to as a consensual leadership style is favoured.

In a genre that loves numbers from Zero to One, Art of the Start 2.0, Three Levels of Leadership, Four Disciplines, Five Dysfunctions, Six Sigma, Sever Habits, and Eight Lessons – we now have Nine Types of Leader. There is a drive to provide a quantifiable number of steps, or types or possibilities and I often wonder how many of these books start with a fixed number and then negotiate the breakdown against it. I can imagine several ways to divide the characteristics up and at times it feels divided by personality and others by role plus the terms aren’t always intuitive.

I would recommend this book and I would also like to thank Kogan Page and NetGalley for providing me with a free ARC copy in return for an honest review.

A genuinely helpful management text book that will be used by MBA students for years to come. Full of specific, real-life examples with plenty of lessons to learn.

The introduction is sort of interesting. It is usually used to set the premise of a book, to set context for a story, or to give history as to why the author is an expert on the subject. And oftentimes an introduction is written by someone who is not the author because heaping praise on the following material can come across as somewhat... well, as bragging. And this introduction sure did. There is a LOT of name-dropping in this intro and in the rest of the book. The author has certainly interviewed and been in contact with a lot of people whose names are recognizable.
I wish there had been more about why these 9 types had been chosen. Usually, with nonfiction, I enjoy seeing the scientific reasoning behind why specific categories were chosen and this book definitely doesn't have that. It is interesting that the author actually makes a point of saying that he didn't want to write "another academic study of leadership." And Ashton even admits that at least one of his analyses is very subjective Aside from the name-dropping, the author is a good writer and people may enjoy thinking about their own immediate (and not-so-immediate) leaders and categorizing them.

Three stars
This book comes out January 26th
Ebook from Kogan Page Ltd and NetGalley
Opinions are my own

This book was a great lead. Although the introduction did seem long, it was interesting to read about the different leaders and how we can use the leadership of today to prepare for the future. Some of the British references I didn’t understand fully but overall this is a good read!

Thanks to Kogan Page Ltd and NetGalley for a copy to honestly review.