The Leadership Quotient: 12 Dimensions for Measuring and Improving Leadership by Bill Service and Dave Arnott. iUniverse Press (http://www.iuniverse.com), 2021 Pine Lake Road, Suite 100, Lincoln, Nebraska 68512, 2006, 496 pages, $30.95 (softcover).

An engaging and important book, The Leadership Quotient provides a realistic, practical, and workable model to identify, measure, and improve leadership effectiveness. Authors Bill Service and Dave Arnott argue with sound and convincing logic that leaders must clearly understand the fundamentals and interplay of followers, leaders, and environments. This interaction is essential before one can become a successful leader. Although no clear-cut, universally accepted definition of leadership has emerged, the authors correctly echo the most widely accepted definition among theorists and practitioners: that leadership is any attempt to influence the behavior of an individual or group to accomplish an objective.

Service and Arnott contend that there is no magic to being a good leader, suggesting that effective leadership involves spending time around things that are really important, setting priorities, measuring outcomes, and rewarding them. Neither a simplistic, by-the-numbers, traditionally motivational work nor an excessive academic treatment of leadership theories and analyses, The Leadership Quotient outlines the core principles of a set of logical guidelines to measure and improve one’s leadership through more insightful understanding and application of leadership tools. Contending that every person has the potential to become a leader, it provides a four-quadrant model to allow individuals to identify and leverage their personal leadership characteristics to improve their capabilities as leaders or help others to do so.

This back-to-basics text is powerfully convincing in maintaining that one must learn and practice the fundamentals of leadership regardless of the leadership level a person currently occupies or the level to which he or she aspires. In effect, people don’t go to school once in a lifetime to study leadership but stay in school all of their lives. What they learn after they know it all is what really counts. Furthermore, learning moments occur as people become leaders: things happen over and over again, and they learn in a spiral—not a straight line. Then, one day they get it.

A lifestyle for leadership success, The Leadership Quotient categorizes and measures a leader’s strengths and weaknesses for the purpose of improving sustainable leadership performance. The authors identify 12 verifiable dimensions of leadership labeled as quotients, measuring them separately and interactively: appearance, behavior, communications, desire, emotions, intelligence, knowledge, management, people, reality, situation, and experience. This formula for leadership improvement is designed to ameliorate leadership execution for anyone who has followers in varying environmental conditions. Service and Arnott clearly define these quotients as they guide readers through the process of accessing their ability to lead, believing that becoming a leader means first becoming oneself by means of self-discovery. Their book directly supports leadership development by focusing the learner on self-reflection and finding the essence of leadership through guided personal assessment.

This thoughtful and thought-provoking study also addresses leadership commitment and necessity directed toward accomplishment. Leaders cannot help changing the present because the present is not good enough. The authors make an excellent point in stating that the title of leader is just a phrase. In actuality, one earns a reputation as a leader by gaining trust, committing to something other than one’s own self-interest, and helping people achieve their goals. Additionally, in appendix A, the authors help us better understand that leadership and management, though related, are different. Specifically, management is granted whereas leadership is earned. Nevertheless, the two support each other: we need both leaders and managers.

Examining The Leadership Quotient is a rewarding experience. This reviewer is convinced that leaders who successfully apply its principles will go a long way toward solving problems they may have with themselves, their followers, or the situations they confront.

Dr. Richard I. Lester
Maxwell AFB, Alabama

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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