The Deep Blue Sea: Rethinking the Source of Leadership

If whitecaps are the individual leaders within organizations, then the deep blue sea is the rest of us--that vast foundation often obscured beneath the whitecaps but the very foundation that makes them possible. This is the central metaphor of this book, which posits that, in our age of multiple backgrounds and meanings, the image of the leader as a single, dominant figure--or even as someone who knows how to cultivate and wield the most influence--must broaden to encompass many people sharing leadership across perspectives to reach common goals. That idea is expanded upon here, interspersed with the fictional tale of the changing of the guard at the Zoffner Piano Company, which illustrates the book's main points.

If Drath's idea seems sound to the point of dullness, that's perhaps because it has been, in some incarnation or another, the crux of every new book about leadership for the past 10 years: the age of the single, great lone leader has passed into a new age where dialogue, collaboration, and cross-perspectives are more important than ever. With its quasi-academic language, The Deep Blue Sea, doesn't really add to that lot, and moreover, it lacks the real-life examples from major companies that give so many books of this sort their kick. It's not a must-read, but for anyone determined to read absolutely whatever they can on the topic of 21st-century leadership, it certainly won't hurt--and the story about the daughter who inherits the reins of Zoffner Piano from her benevolent-ruler father and then has to reinvent the rules of leadership to keep the company alive is actually quite compelling in its quaint, family-business fashion. --Timothy Murphy