Acknowledgments
It wouldn’t have been possible for me to compile this book without the help of many people. First and foremost, I am grateful to those 13 Masters included in this book: Joseph Badaracco Jr., Warren Bennis, Debashis Chatterjee, Howard Gardner, Bill George, Cho-yun Hsu, John Kotter, Jim Kouzes, James March, Jerry Porras, Peter Senge, Noel Tichy, and Manfred Kets de Vries. They kindly shared their time and insights with me to make this book happen. I am truly honored to have had the opportunity to collaborate with this “Dream Team” in the field of leadership.
Some deserve particular credit: Warren Bennis, for introducing me to other leadership thinkers and writing a very generous foreword; Jim Kouzes, for encouraging me to pursue the idea of an English book; James March and Peter Senge, for writing a foreword for my Chinese book Master Classes of Leadership, which has spawned this book.
I am also privileged to have spoken to the following people on management and leadership when preparing for this book: Jim Collins, Thomas Davenport, Ronald Heifetz, Philip Kotler, Daniel Quinn Mills, Scott Snook, and Robert Sternberg. Although those conversations didn’t make their way into this book, they helped me toward a better understanding of the subject of leadership.
A special note of thanks must go to Jet Magsaysay, a dear friend and mentor. He participated in this project from the very beginning by recommending candidates I should interview and made great efforts to review and edit almost each chapter before I submitted the manuscript. Aside from being a management expert, he was a great critic and editor. Professor Steven DeKrey reviewed an early version of the manuscript. His comments are deeply appreciated.
Joel Balbin, C. J. Hwu, Nick Melchior, and John Owen, of John Wiley & Sons, have worked with me closely on this book. C. J. Hwu saw the value in a cursory book proposal and helped to perfect it. Nick Melchior provided precious comments on the manuscript, and managed most of the publishing efforts as the senior editor. Joel Balbin, the production editor, made his best efforts to coordinate the production and keep the schedule. John Owen, the wonderful copyeditor, took great pains to polish the manuscript. It was really a pleasure to work with all of them.
After I shaped the idea of the Eight Disciplines of Leadership, I was able to test it as an educator at executive development programs hosted by corporations and universities. I am thankful to those program participants for providing useful feedback, and to the organizers, particularly Professor Ye Zicheng of Peking University, for offering me the opportunities.
Last, but by no means least, I would like to thank my wife, Chen Zhongzhu, for her incredible patience and solid support, and my two sons, Baqiao and Andi, for interrupting my work in various, delightful ways while I was writing this book.
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