Leaders in Transition: The Tensions at Work as New Leaders Take Charge

Leaders in Transition brings a new perspective on why some leaders succeed more than others when taking charge of an organisation. Based on in-depth case studies, when four new leaders and their teams in large and complex international organisations were tracked for over a year, this book uncovers that success in managing transition is directly related to leaders’ ability to balance tensions, appropriately to the context. The reasons for each leader’s effectiveness are explored and analysed, allowing the authors then to extrapolate some general conclusions about the ways in which these tensions reveal themselves during all leadership transitions. Evidently, the success or failure of a new leader is the result of the way multiple actors (the new leader, his or her boss, his organisation and its stakeholders) behave, before and during the taking charge. These multiple interactions are revealed and discussed.