Leaders and Leadership

About the Book

In the West, and in America particularly, we have deep-seated beliefs in 1. Evolution – the idea that all things are constantly evolving in the “right” direction; 2. Progress – the idea that whatever is newer is better, whether it is a “theory” or a technological tool; and 3. Consensus – the idea that the more people who adopt a new idea or a new fashion in clothes or cars, the greater the likelihood that “they” are right. So we go from a new fashion to the next new fashion. We believe that change is progress. And we have faith that the changes over which we have no control are taking us where we ought to be going – since “evolving” is inevitable. These are beliefs that structure the core of our thoughts and our lives. These are beliefs that lead us to see the world as linear and literal. Most of the longest-running civilizations of the past – native American Indian, for example – were cyclical. Every generation was expected to reprise and replicate the preceding generation, with only minor changes in execution. Those people were for thousands of years truth-keepers, carefully guarding the truths that had been passed down to them from the past. By contrast, we are truth-seekers, forever inventing newer truths in order to render the existing ones obsolete. As a result, we look for the “wisdom” for living and for running our organizations in the most recent emanations from our gurus and “experts.” In doing so, we miss the wisdom of the ages. This book attempts to redress that fl aw in our thinking. Lee Thayer shows us in this book how to fi nd the wisdom that could make a real difference in our lives and our businesses. Few would be more qualifi ed to do so.

About the Author

Lee Thayer is a scholar and writer known around the world for his many years of research and publications on the human condition. He has taught or lectured at many of the most prestigious universities in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Europe, Scandinavia, Australia, and China. He has been a Fulbright professor in Finland, a Ford Foundation Fellow at Harvard, and was twice awarded a Danforth Foundation Teacher Award for excellence in his teaching. His background is in music (composing and arranging), the humanities, engineering, and social and clinical psychology. He was one of the founders of the field of communication as a university discipline, and is a Past President of what was at that time the largest association of human communication scholars in the world. He was also the founding editor of the influential journal Communication, which was devoted to pragmatic insights into the human condition by the top thinkers in the world. His early work consisted of 14 books of research on the connection between communication and the human condition. More recently, he has summarized his long life of research into all matters human and social in such books as Communication: A Radically New Approach to Life’s Most Perplexing Problem, two collections of essays, On Communication and Pieces: Toward a Revisioning of Communication/Life. The present Doing Life; A Pragmatist Manifesto is a summary of his innovative perspectives on this subject for past 60 years. There is also his proposed alternative to the reach of biological evolution into the social sciences, Explaining Things: Inventing Ourselves and our Worlds. He lives in Western North Carolina with his artist/wife Kate Thayer. He is also renowned for his current work as a CEO coach of choice.