Transparency: How Leaders Create a Culture of Candor

In Transparency, the authors–a powerhouse trio in the field of leadership–look at what conspires against "a culture of candor" in organizations to create disastrous results, and suggest ways that leaders can achieve healthy and honest openness. They explore the lightning-rod concept of "transparency"–which has fast become the buzzword not only in business and corporate settings but in government and the social sector as well.

Together Bennis, Goleman, and O'toole explore why the containment of truth is the dearest held value of far too many organizations and suggest practical ways that organizations, their leaders, their members, and their boards can achieve openness. After years of dedicating themselves to research and theory, at first separately, and now jointly, these three leadership giants reveal the multifaceted importance of candor and show what promotes transparency and what hinders it. They describe how leaders often stymie the flow of information and the structural impediments that keep information from getting where it needs to go. This vital resource is written for any organization–business, government, and nonprofit–that must achieve a culture of candor, truth, and transparency.

About the Authors

Warren Bennis is known around the world as the preëminent expert on the subject of leadership. He is University Professor of Business Administration and Founding Chairman of The Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California and serves as Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. His bestselling books Leaders and On Becoming a Leader have been translated into 21 languages. The Financial Times recently named Leaders one of the top 50 business books of all time. In August '07, BusinessWeek called him one of the ten b-school professors who have had the greatest influence on business thinking.

Daniel Goleman, Ph.D., authored the bestselling books Emotional Intelligence and Primal Leadership. He has covered behavioral and brain sciences for the New York Times for twelve years. He was awarded the American Psychological Association's Career Achievement Award and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has taught at Harvard, his alma mater, and addresses groups and businesses around the world.

James O'toole is Chairman, Business Ethics at Denver University. He formerly ran the Aspen Institute and has held other academic posts. He is the author of 14 books on leadership, individual growth and development in the workplace, corporate culture and philosophy.

Patricia Ward Biederman, a former staff writer at the Los Angeles Times, is a prize-winning reporter and columnist. A long-time collaborator with Warren Bennis, she coauthored the national best-seller Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration.