ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses the relation between leadership and religion, reflects on popular notions of leadership such as charismatic and spiritual leadership. It also describes the relation between leadership and authenticity, and explores the fashionable idea of authentic leadership. The book is concerned with leadership speech, and mainly draws on J. L. Austin's notion of the performative and Michel Foucault's work on fearless speech. It explores the recent emphasis on the importance of sincerity, honesty, transparency and self-knowledge in leadership thought, through the case of authentic leadership. The book suggests that the image of a leader is crucial to understand phenomena that we call leadership. It looks at how leadership concepts offer different solutions to the religious problem of how to bridge the mundane with the divine.
