Good management skills alone won't get executives and their organizations far enough. What is also needed is that seemingly indefinable, evanescent, quirky, and paradoxical quality called leadership. Leadership lies in the emotional side of management. It pumps life into organizations and gives meaning to management structures. Leadership is symbolic, charismatic, inspirational - no matter how it is defined, Barach and Eckhardt prove that it can be learned. Their book is thus a solidly researched, readable assessment of what leadership actually is, its various dimensions, its place among other necessary executive skills, and how it can be nurtured and propagated. Barach and Eckhardt start by describing the emotional side of management, the paradoxical nature of leadership, and how it fits into the full set of executive responsibilities and skills. They go on to break leadership down into its 20 components. In chapters devoted to each component, they provide readers with well-documented descriptions of leadership's characteristics: desire, decisiveness, vision, integrity, anchoring, following, kinship, caring, inspiring, listening, telling, and mentoring. They reassemble the parts and show how leadership works in practice in Washington, D.C. Closing with a detailed discussion of the 6 most important leadership issues that Barach has identified in his decade-long study of the topic, the authors offer readers an opportunity to discover issues familiar to them personally, analyze them, and make use of the results.