Sly and Mighty: How to Recognize, Resist and Rise Above Toxic Power
Formats & Editions
Is your CEO quietly eroding your confidence? Does your school leadership team run on fear? Is your manager prone to making grand gestures with polished, yet deeply unsettling, charisma? Does your boss seem to delight in making life for you and your team so much worse?
We live in a world where confidence is mistaken for competence, and dominance for strength. Across politics, business and everyday workplaces - including yours - a damaging leadership style has taken hold, defined by low empathy, excessive control and performative reassurance that conceals real harm. In Sly and Mighty, acclaimed psychotherapist Kathleen Saxton reveals how narcissistic leadership operates both loudly and invisibly. Whether overt or covert, it corrodes culture, silences dissent and leaves people anxious, confused and diminished.
More than a diagnostic guide, this book combines high-stakes case studies with the latest research on workplace narcissism to offer clear insight and practical therapeutic strategies. Saxton helps you recognise unhealthy dynamics, protect your self-worth and reclaim agency. From high finance to the voluntary sector, Sly and Mighty is both a map and a mirror for anyone seeking healthier leadership - and a healthier relationship with power.
Read More
Praise for Sly and Mighty
-
Positive leadership is key to a successful business and fulfilled employees - if it's not working it needs to be brought sharply into focus. Kathleen Saxton names the challenges, explains them and, crucially, shows you how to deal with them. Every boss and every board should read this. - Theo Paphitis, Retail entrepreneur, Dragons' Den investorKathleen Saxton has done something rare and necessary. She has taken the lived experience of toxic power and given it both a clinical framework and a human face. Essential reading for anyone who leads, is led or sits on a board. - Jon Slade, CEO, Financial TimesA rare and important contribution, rigorous in its psychological grounding yet utterly accessible. Saxton bridges the gap between clinical insight and organisational reality with true authority. - Professor Andrew Stephen AM, Said Business SchoolSly & Mighty is the book I wish had existed earlier in my career; for anyone in a leadership or management role, building a culture or simply trying to survive one, it will be hugely valuable. Saxton writes with authority, compassion and the hard-won wisdom that only comes from having seen this world from every angle. - Anna Jones, CEO, The Telegraph
Find a book you'll love, get our newsletter
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
© Hachette Aotearoa | New Zealand, All Rights Reserved · Site by Chook