In Extremis Leadership

In Extremis Leadership: Leading As If Your Life Depended On It is a book on leadership. It was released in June 2007 in Hardcover.

Overview

In extremis leadership, an original concept, is the study of leadership in extreme settings and centers around the professionalism and expertise that self-selected leaders exercise when leading. Leaders who embrace this concept do not simply react to crisis; they choose to lead effectively in dangerous settings while mitigating risk. The concept of in extremis leadership, Kolditz argues, gives purpose, motivation, and direction to people.

In his book In Extremis Leadership: Leading As If Your Life Depended On It, Colonel Thomas Kolditz - a Professor at West Point and an on-the-ground military leader - shows how extreme life-and-death leadership skills can offer relevant lessons for leaders in any setting.

In it, Kolditz explains that his research on in extremis leadership Situations, where followers perceive their lives to be threatened, reveals that the leadership lessons and principles in evidence in dangerous settings also apply to leading in business and everyday life. Kolditz describes a variety of high risk situations that are ideal settings to seek and find great leaders, assess how they might be different, and glean valuable insights for extraordinary leadership in our everyday lives. Through real-life stories of leaders in these extreme situations, Kolditz insists that leaders at all levels can improve their effectiveness.

The book contains in-depth InterViews with such in extremis leaders as chiefs of SWAT teams, mountain-climbing guides, leaders of large-formation skydiving events, the U.S. Military Academy's national champion parachute team, and team leaders in football, wrestling, swimming, and rugby, as well as the first armored cavalry commander to roll his tanks into the fiery streets of Baghdad in 2003.

Colonel Tom Kolditz is Professor and Head of the Department Of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. Kolditz has served in an array of military tactical command and technical staff assignments worldwide, and as a leadership and HR policy analyst in the Pentagon.

References

Kolditz, Thomas. In Extremis Leadership: Leading as if Your Life Depended On it. Wiley: 2007.