The goal of nonprofit leadership is to maximize the amount of social goods that improve the quality of life of individuals, communities, and society. A Difference is devoted to how leaders strengthen relationships. The authors focus on the roles of coach, politician and campaigner. The leader as coach builds a staff team to foster teamwork, designs the right kind of organization, develops a successful board and staff relationship and encourages top performance. The leader as politician mobilizes a diverse cross section of individuals and groups and converts them to stakeholders.
Stakeholders are vital to the success and growth of an organization.
Finally, the leader as campaigner helps generate financial and technical resources to fulfill the organization s mission. While Nanus and Dobbs convincingly demonstrate that nonprofits should develop leaders at all levels of the organization and community, they focus too heavily on the results of becoming an effective leader and not enough on the process of how emerging leaders develop. It is like discussing a cake without explaining the ingredients and recipe. Many nonprofit leaders are operating struggling organizations and could benefit from more concrete training and information on leadership that they can relate to. For example, each chapter starts with a vignette of an effective nonprofit leader.