Why Should Anyone Be Led by You? With a New Preface by the Authors: What It Takes to Be an Authentic Leader

by Rob Goffee, Gareth Jones

Are you an authentic leader? Too many companies are managed not by leaders but by mere role players and faceless bureaucrats. What would it take to replace these empty suits with real leaders--men and women who are confident in who they are and what they stand for and who truly inspire people to achieve extraordinary results? Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones argue that leaders don't become great by aspiring to a list of universal character traits. Rather, effective leaders are authentic: they deploy individual strengths to engage followers' hearts, minds, and souls. Authentic leaders are skillful at consistently being themselves, even as they alter their behavior to respond effectively to changing contexts. In short, the authors present a powerful case: that it takes "being yourself, in context, with skill" to be a successful, authentic leader--and they show you how to do exactly that. In this lively and practical book, Goffee and Jones draw from extensive research to reveal how to hone and deploy your unique leadership assets while managing the inherent tensions at the heart of successful leadership: when to show emotion and when to withhold it, how to get close to followers while maintaining an appropriate role distance, and maintaining your individuality while "conforming enough" to gain traction and lead change. Underscoring the inherently social nature of leadership, the book also explores how leaders can stay attuned to the needs and expectations of followers. Why Should Anyone Be Led by You? will forever change how we view, develop, and practice the art of leadership, wherever we live and work.

Genres: Leadership, Business, Nonfiction, Management, Self Help, Personal Development, Psychology

256 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2006

Reviews

[Joanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not outstanding but good. I has trouble following the examples back and forth and found myself wishing for more clarity and structure.

Left me with some insights on leadership: be yourself; don't follow any instruction on leadership specifically. Show some weaknesses (manage which) and be authentic. Learn appropriate social distance and familiarity. "Break bread" with those you are leading. "Situational sensing" an important characteristic (gained through sales jobs, case study reading, etc. Analyzing interpersonal results).

This book seemed to contradict it's own advice at times. I think it was demonstrating how the are no hard and fast rules, but I found it a bit scattered.

[Ivan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is written by two men, Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones, who themselves have spent a considerable amount of their lives in the study of leadership and management. Their main point is that leaders who are effective are those who are themselves—i.e., those are authentic—and thus lead out of the wellspring of who they are.

One of the things they emphasize time and again is to know yourself and be authentic with others. It is a temptation to want to seek to imitate others in the hope to like them experience success. This is commendable in one sense, for we seek to learn from others and thus improve upon our strengths and shore up our weaknesses. But in another sense this is dangerous because people can easily see through a manufactured individual who is clearly not being himself.

As mentioned above, one of the temptations for leaders is to be someone they are not. But an equal danger for leaders is to impose our own personality or leadership styles on those around us, expecting them to mimic each and every way that we deem as the norm. As leaders in the church of God, we are especially cued to this since we know the Lord of the Church has made all of us as spiritual snowflakes, uniquely wired and gifted for service in the body of Christ. While we are all called to pursue holiness and model ourselves after Christ and show fruit according to godliness, we are not then expected to show that in the same way. Some are called to speak and lead, others are called to serve and follow. Some are more sedate in personality while others are more lively and expressive. As leaders we must not only know ourselves but we must be thoughtful as we consider those we lead and seek to situate them in the best and most fruitful ministry positions.

[Bob Selden · Rating 5 out of 5]

At last someone has written a book on leadership! So many so called “leadership” books are actually dealing with management. However, Goffee and Jones with their description of “authentic leadership” have clearly defined the essential fundamental interrelationship between the person aspiring to lead and those who might decide to follow.

The book is crammed full of actual case studies of people who have both succeeded and failed as leaders, with the author’s explanation as to why. I found the concepts easy to understand and follow.

It is a little slow reading at times, due to the numerous case studies. However, it is worth persevering, as the case studies do illustrate the author’s points very well.

Although Goffee and Jones assiduously avoid giving leadership recipes – they rightly maintain that leadership is contextual – there are some good learning points for aspiring leaders. Chapter four for example – Read and Rewrite the Context – has some gems. In this chapter, they describe three levels of analysis for leaders; key leaders who may make the biggest impact on one’s performance, important teams, and thirdly the context and constraints within which one must operate.

This should be an essential text for anyone who is looking to take on a leadership role within family, community, organisation or country. Highly recommended.

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book, as it has something different to say than most other leadership books. What I took away was the skill of clever conformity: to change an organization you have to a part of it. The leader cannot be completely separated from the organization, and must earn his/her spot at the head of the pack. The authors also highlighted the difficulty in the delicate balance of emotional distance, but that leaders use incredible perception skills (situation-sensing) to find the correct balance for each situation. In other words, great leaders are really intuitive, which cannot really be taught.

[Sergey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a very specific guide, as one might imagine looking at this book title. Rather just a compilation of conventional qualities most leaders have diluted with stories about a bunch of CEOs. After all, it was an ok, but not an easy read, took me longer to finish, than I anticipated.

[Klaas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some useful advice but pretty repetitive and boring read. They could easily have condensed it into 100 or so pages.

[Ruby Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Here are 10 lessons and anecdotes inspired by Why Should Anyone Be Led by You? by Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones:

1. Be Authentic—Don’t Pretend to Be Someone You’re Not
Lesson: The best leaders embrace their true selves rather than imitating others.
Anecdote: A young manager tried to mimic a famous CEO’s strict leadership style but struggled. When he led with his natural, collaborative approach, his team thrived.

2. Great Leaders Show Their Vulnerability
Lesson: Leaders who admit their weaknesses build trust and relatability.
Anecdote: A CEO once confessed he didn’t have all the answers during a crisis. His honesty encouraged his team to step up and find solutions together.

3. Leadership is Situational—Adapt to Your Team’s Needs
Lesson: There is no one-size-fits-all leadership style.
Anecdote: A project leader who used a hands-off approach struggled with a new, inexperienced team. Once he adapted and provided more guidance, productivity improved.

4. Lead with Purpose, Not Just Authority
Lesson: People follow leaders who inspire them with a clear mission.
Anecdote: A company with high turnover rates saw a shift when a new leader emphasized purpose-driven work, making employees feel valued and engaged.

5. Encourage Diversity of Thought
Lesson: The best leaders surround themselves with people who challenge their ideas.
Anecdote: A leader who always hired like-minded people found his company stagnant. When he brought in diverse perspectives, innovation flourished.

6. Leadership is About Trust, Not Just Power
Lesson: People willingly follow leaders they trust.
Anecdote: A manager who micromanaged every task lost his team’s respect. When he learned to delegate and trust his employees, their performance improved.

7. Be Visible and Present for Your Team
Lesson: True leaders don’t hide behind emails—they connect with people.
Anecdote: A distant CEO realized employee morale was low. When he started personally engaging with teams, he rebuilt trust and motivation.

8. Know When to Show Toughness and When to Show Empathy
Lesson: Balance between compassion and decisiveness makes a strong leader.
Anecdote: A leader had to let go of underperforming staff but ensured they received coaching and support, preserving trust in the organization.

9. Allow Others to Shine—Leadership is Not About You
Lesson: Great leaders lift others rather than seek personal glory.
Anecdote: A leader took credit for his team’s work, leading to resentment. When he started publicly recognizing their contributions, morale soared.

10. Leadership is a Journey, Not a Destination
Lesson: Constant self-improvement is key to great leadership.
Anecdote: A successful executive never stopped learning, attending leadership workshops and seeking feedback, which kept him relevant and respected.
"

[Tõnu Vahtra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Effective leadership is a skillful authentic role performance with the capacity to transform organizations and enrich lives. It's always difficult. But it's well worth a try.
"You do not become a more effective leader by becoming more like someone else" (on all the books written on how to become Jack Welch et al) VS authentic leadership.
I recently bought "Why should anyone work here?" book from same authors but once I started with it I thought that I should actually start with this one first as it was first released already in 2005 (also have Estonian translation version from that time in my bookshelf). In high level I was expecting a bit more systematic approach but it felt repetitive and jumping around different, the examples were based on very few companies and managers (mainly focus was on BBC and their transformative CEO) which I have not read that much about before. This is clearly a "leadership" and not a "management" book.

The presented model is based on 7 domains that can be assessed with following questions:
1) What personal differences form your leadership capability?
2) Are you human by revealing appropriate personal weakness?
3) Do you vary your leadership style given the context?
4) Do you create enough rapport whilst remaining authentic?
5) Are you distant when telling ‘What’ yet close when asking ‘How’?
6) Do you know when to speed up or slow down?
7) How well do you communicate, using personal experiences, stories & analogies?

Key aspects of authentic leadership style:
*Situational – What is required by the leader is influenced by the situation
*Non-hierarchical – due to decreasing hierarchy and increasing personal influence
*Relational – Leaders need followers. Therefore it is a ‘relationship’

Such style represents consistency (in words and action), coherence (in performance of their role) and comfort (with self).

What do followers want?
*Followers want significance.
*Followers want excitement, inspiration and authenticity (to be led by a real person whom they can trust). Real people cry, believe, they lose their temper (sometimes all three).
*Are you a source of energy for your team or a drain of their energy?

You want to be a more effective leader? - Be yourself more with skill (in context).

Some book highlights from this youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WPRa...

[Marisa Martins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uma liderança eficaz assenta-se na autenticidade, liderando de acordo com o que realmente somos e não a tentar “forçar” um qualquer modelo de liderança criado ou usado por outros. Ao longo destas páginas, Rob Goffee e Gareth Jones apresentam argumentos que sustentam a teoria que as pessoas preferem líderes únicos, que combinam força e vulnerabilidade, e que estão dispostos (sem medos) de revelarem um pouco da sua própria humanidade.
Posto isto, na perspectiva dos autores, para um líder ser autêntico deve: mostrar vulnerabilidade / revelar fraquezas, sempre de forma cuidadosa (o líder torna-se mais acessível e humano, o que gera confiança e empatia); ser intuitivo (conhece bem as pessoas que lidera e consegue adaptar a liderança às necessidades e motivações das pessoas); ter coragem para desafiar normas (não seguir sempre as regras e o status quo, que acaba por mostrar originalidade e inovação); usar as diferenças das pessoas para gerar valor (a capacidade para reconhecer e valorizar as forças dos seus seguidores).
Consciência. Coerência. Consistência. Confiança. Empatia. Vulnerabilidade. Autenticidade.
Recomendado (a quem quer aprender mais sobre liderança).

“Ir order for leaders to make a real impact in theirs organization, they must achieve this sort of ‘traction’. They must engage with organizational life in a way that creates the possibility of making change happen. So, to the three ingredients of authenticity — consciousness, coherence and consistency — we would add a fourth for those who want to make a real difference: a necessary degree of clever conformity.” (Pág. 133)

[Andrei Popescu · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've chosen this book as I’m currently pursuing a management position within the company I’m working for. The title seemed very appealing as I ask myself pretty often the question “why should anybody listen to me”. It seemed like a perfect match.

However, I don’t feel that the book helped me as much as I expected it to. The main ideas around which it gravitates are:
- a leader should be authentic, always show your true colors
- don’t be afraid to show some weakness now and then
- manage the distance between yourself and your peers carefully
- be fair and kind

The above points were presented through various examples from the American corporate world. Some of these examples were pretty hard to follow, even though most of them proved to be useful.

Being a leader is no easy task and there are some traits which can be either native, or can be developed in time with a lot of work.

After reading Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones’s book I came to the conclusion that leadership is not something that you can learn by studying or going through a course, to become a good leader you must get your hands dirty and experience both success but also challenges and real life struggle.


To conclude, the book is good for someone who’s willing to get their toes in the water when it comes to what leadership means, however being an authentic leaders takes much more.

[Krashagi Saini · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book answers a couple of questions about leadership biases and myths. It states the obvious impact of leadership on our lives i.e profound in work, spiritual lives , in sports , in politics. It also talks about the search for authentic leaders and the authentic quest. The term leadership in itself has been so over hyped by people that its true meaning has been lost. This book talks about authentic leaders : who display consistency between words and deeds, have capacity to display coherence in role performances(communicate a consistent underlying thread) and involves comfort with self. This book talks about various other parameters that differentiate authentic leaders from others...But first and foremost thing is " leadership begins with you".This book is a good read that illustrates authentic leadership in action.

[Cullen Haynes · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s such a refreshing change of pace to finally read a book on actual leadership. Many books in the space tend to deal with management. The authors have boiled down their philosophy to one of authentic leadership, whereby these individuals employ specific traits that capture the hearts and minds of those they are responsible for.

The main message I drew from this little gem is that effective leaders are considerably themselves yet still have the ability to adapt to situations and rewrite the context.

This is a book for everyone at all levels within this school we call life.

[Wulan Suci Maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is no leadership without followership, and for me the best leader is an authentic leader who is comfortable to show imperfections, and able to make high performance team.

An authentic leader need an authentic follower, who is comfortable to speak up and to give any feedback to the leader.

Because there is more to life than work, and there is more to work than lead. Leadership is hard but worth it, given its positive impact that can possibly happen in big scale.

Good book for fun read, picked it up from the book shelves because currently quite relevant for me.

[Aymeric · Rating 2 out of 5]

I listened to the audio-book.

Nothing extraordinary and in fact rather dated. The examples are a bit everywhere.

I believe there are newer and better books on leadership.

Some key pointers I took from the book:
Meaningful performance and not performance only. Leading with a meaning / a purpose.

Chapter 2: find your third place besides work and family (bar? YPO?)

Tough empathy = I give you what you need and not what you want

Teams: 4 stages 1/ storming 2/ forming 3/ norming and 4/ performing

[Mark Nichols · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good, useful, but sadly longer than it needed to be - which is par for the course for this genre. By good and useful there is plenty to reflect on, and I'm grateful for the appendices and the structured opportunity to reflect on my own style. By slightly longer than it needed to be, well, there's plenty of repetition and light weight anecdote adding too much volume to some essentially simple, yet important and worthwhile, principles.

[Spring · Rating 4 out of 5]

I derived some of these ideas myself prior to reading this book, like being yourself, finding your own leadership style that works while knowing when to conform. Be smart about what you reveal, and building a consistent image. The book has a lot of examples of what different leaders did, I enjoyed reading it. What followers are after, is also an important section, I thought it could be brought forward in the book rather than leaving it towards the end.

[Alexander Hunt · Rating 4 out of 5]

The core message of this book, that leadership is about portraying parts of your authentic self whilst adapting to circumstance, was compelling. A few of their examples seemed a bit too 'generic leadership book' for my taste however.

[KmC · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed the book. I read it before attending a MasterClass by Gareth Jones, one of the co-authors. I learned a lot and it reminded me to always think of your audience when addressing an individual or a group. And to remember consistency and authenticity are key to leadership.

[Muthu Arumugam · Rating 1 out of 5]

There are so many references for different leaders. It’s not very effective when you had to look back on them and pick your style. Most of the leaders have their own style. This book fail to give that perspective well.

[Dominique · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written book with proper insights on leadership. Especially the relational aspect gives leadership a different dimension. Only the step from follower to leader seems to be blurred in the end. But still recommendable reading for those who want to lead.

[Ryan Barretto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb read, which should be mandatory for anyone in a team management role, not just leadership. There are lots of great tips on developing authenticity.

The writing style and the examples of authentic leaders

[Chloe Paton · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lend from a friend whilst on maternity leave.
I quite enjoyed that this focused more on leadership than management, and I resonated with the reiteration of the value of being an authentic leader. Some of the examples are now a little dated (published 2005) but insightful nonetheless.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

The central message is that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to leadership. Instead, leaders must discover their own way to lead. More here: https://gagor.pro/book/2024/why-shoul...

[David Macnamara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting enough topic but all a bit too ethereal for me.

[Florin · Rating 5 out of 5]

For everyone out there, leader or follower, I strongly recommend this book.

It is concise, full of real-life anecdotes and it stays in the range of common sense.

[Laurence · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some good advice on being a leader rather than a manager.

[Bledar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great question to ask. Don’t just assume you are a leader, but make yourself someone who others follow. The book leads you to ask for personality and skills that are needed in leadership.

[Rik Van Bruggen]

Interesting read - lots of very cool examples.

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that widened my perspective, deepened my thinking and didn't shy away from setting out the realities of what it means to lead.

[Jackie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some really good and valuable insights but I found it a little repetitive and monotonous and without real clarity. Left feeling reassured that I already strive to do much of what is recommended.