This chapter sets the context for the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of the book. The book provides some distinctions between leadership and management, talks about crisis leaders, and introduces the J-Curve leadership model. According to Peter Northouse, strong management without leadership can be stifling and bureaucratic; strong leadership without management can result in meaningless or misdirected change. In the realm of leadership, self-awareness is defined as one's ability to self-observe, to accurately compare one's behavior with a standard, and to know how one is seen by others. One way of assessing self-awareness is to compare the way a leader rates himself or herself with ratings on these same dimensions provided by followers, peers or a supervisor. Cultural expectations vary within sub-regions, between other regions of the world, and among organizations within regions and sub-regions. The applicability of the J-Curve model will vary from culture to culture.