Leading experts Marvin Weisbord and Sandra Janoff describe eight highly effective leadership skills that confound conventional views-you can be a more effective leader if you give up trying to change or control people.

Leadership experts Marvin Weisbord and Sandra Janoff make a bold claim: contrary to conventional management theory, you actually gain more control when you exert less pressure on those you lead-which also means less stress for you.

Working with people all over the world, Weisbord and Janoff realized that leaders trying to tell their people what to do, the traditional approach, wasn't' working. It was far more effective for leaders to nurture and guide people's ability to lead and control themselves. Over time, they developed three alternative principles which form the foundation of this book: 1) Have people build on their own experiences instead of pushing for yours; 2) Set things up so that people coordinate and control their own work rather that you doing it for them; and 3) Change the conditions under which people interact rather than try to change the people.

This book describes eight essential leadership skills that put these principles into practice. It shows leaders how to let go of the unrealistic demands that they put on themselves and the far-fetched expectations that others place on them. Leaders will discover how to wear authority lightly and control less while leading more.