View from the Top: An Inside Look
at How People in Power See and Shape the World by D.
Michael Lindsay. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons 2014, pp. 218., $28.00,
paper.
In
what some are calling a seminal and compelling work, D. Michael Lindsay (current
president of Gordon College in Wenham, MA) lays out the synthesis of a grand
inductive enterprise, ten years in the making: View from the Top: An Inside Look at How People in Power See and Shape
the World. During that time, Dr. Lindsay interviewed 550 individuals—about
250 CEOs, 100 non-profit leaders, and many other notables—and, using his
background in sociology (employing the analysis technique of critical empathy, or elsewhere as
“learning from stories as well as statistics”), he wisely finds a way to weave
together what he describes as the largest leadership study of its kind.
Though
he does not disclose each name, Lindsay distinguishes 128 individuals in his
study group as platinum leaders,
those possessing the following three attributes: (1) leading a large-scale
enterprise, (2) an ability to maximize opportunity and catalyze change, and (3)
a talent for garnishing trust and goodwill (xii-xiii). He, then, lays a helpful
groundwork. “At root, leadership is the
exercise of influence in the service of a shared cause. There is no
potential state of leadership; it exists only when action is taken. Power, on
the other hand, is often latent” (xiv). Lastly, in his introduction, Lindsay
relates the deeply personal motivation behind his work: both (1) witnessing the
successes of his father as the president of the Professional Golfers’
Association in America, and (2) responding the resistance from fellow
Christians regarding the pursuit of power or influence.
