This book is about what we have called the "leadership illusion"; the hardwired habit of writers, researchers and leaders themselves, when examining the causes of success or failure, to focus on predominantly the individual and often the context. But very rarely both. Our argument is that to make sense of leadership we first have to make sense of the context in which leaders operate because context and the individual are inextricably linked.
To try to understand a leader without the context is only half the story. This is our attempt to tell the whole story.

This book is about the "leadership illusion"; the habit of writers, researchers and leaders, when considering causes of success or failure, to focus mainly on the individual and often the context but rarely both. This book argues that context and individual are inextricably linked and we first must make sense of the context in which leaders operate.