Wisdom Leadership in Academic Health Science Centers

Drs. Plews-Ogan and Beyt have brought together a highly valuable and coherent series of essays by multiple authors. These essays illuminate leadership for change in the rapidly evolving and stress-laden arena of health care. The target audience for the book is leadership in academic health centers, but the message applies with equal force to all of healthcare delivery. The authors begin by offering wisdom as a unifying concept of excellence in leadership. Wisdom is defined as having components of cognition, reflection, and compassion. In subsequent chapters, these three components are expanded upon to yield seven capacities of wisdom. In the process, the authors incorporate a wide variety of writings about leadership, including Jody Gittell's groundbreaking work on relational leadership and Curt Lindberg's lucid and practical account of the often-mystifying topic of complexity science. The result is a comprehensive guide to healthcare leadership that is novel in its unity and concrete applicability to everyday settings. Along the way, the book cites an abundance of references to writings on leadership and related topics. The value of the book as a real-life guide is enhanced by numerous stories of triumph and challenge in leadership. These stories connect the abstract concepts with the concrete realities of leading in difficult circumstances. The book concludes with an exploration of leadership development for individual leaders and a reflection on how wisdom leadership is manifest in different facets of a leader's thoughts and action. The book as a whole is insightful, inspiring, and confidence-building. -  Gordon Mosser, MD, Senior Fellow, School of Public Health, University of Minnesota and co-author of Understanding Teamwork in Health Care