Richard David Hames

The art and practice of leadership is one of today’s most talked about, important and controversial topics. Fully one third of all management textbooks published during the past decade have been about some aspect of leadership. Most of these are identical in almost all their underlying contentions, models and philosophies. Each year vast sums of money are spent on leadership development based upon the dogma these books promulgate. Yet for all the words, all the talk, and all the resources allocated to the nurturing of leaders and the practice of leadership, very little actually changes. Truly great leaders are still in the minority. Authentic, effective leadership, it seems, is a vanishing art. Meanwhile the cry for more leaders and better leadership grows stronger.

• Over the past two decades Dr. Richard Hames and his colleagues from The Hames Group have made it their business to work alongside and study some of the world’s most remarkable and uncommonly successful leaders – from all walks of life and in every part of the world. The findings from their research reveal a conventional wisdom that is flawed; misguided in even its most basic assumptions.

• In analyzing the exceptional performance, passion, unbounded energy, creativity and longevity of human beings at the peak of their powers, Richard and his team have unraveled a code that still remains a mystery to most of us – hidden even to those who aspire to leadership and even less visible, it would seem, to those who actually write about it.

• People who are as loved in their private lives as they are engaged in their public roles, Hames discovered, instinctively apply a set of principles and a philosophy that go far beyond the orthodoxies of current leadership practice. Five Literacies leaders are the harbingers of a new consciousness, accessing tenets and a state of being that can be learned and practiced by anyone assuming a leadership role in today’s complex world.

The Five Literacies exposes this code, describing an uncommon cognitive and behavioral alchemy in which wisdom, ambient intelligence, collaboration and know-how come together to create potent conditions for change.