Book Review
[Leadership Is an Art] overflows with virtue. Mr. De Pree is the head of his family's furniture company, Herman Miller Inc. Herman Miller is a famously good company to work for and manufactures famously good things to sit in—the various Eames chairs, for example. Mr. De Pree devotes his slim text to the idea of applying decency, charity and common sense to business practice. We can't help but like the man. Therefore, let us say that his opus is as worthy as Scripture, and not say that it's as interesting as the Book of Nehemiah.
P.J. O'Rourke - New York Times
Like the elegant furniture his company makes, De Pree?s book provides a valuable lesson in grace, style, and the elements of success.
Time
Perhaps we should banish all of our management books except Max De Pree?s recent gem, Leadership Is an Art. The successful Herman Miller, Inc., chairman...writes only about trust, grace, spirit, and love...such concerns are the essence of organizations, small or large.
Inc. Magazine
This is a wonderful book. It captures Max's spirit.... He's a truly exceptional person. But it also says more about leadership in clearer, more elegant, and more convincing language than many of the much longer books that have been published on the subject.
Peter F. Drucker
Rather than offering a how-to manual on running a business, DePree, CEO of Herman Miller Inc., a manufacturer of office furniture, details, in deceptively simple but imaginative language, a humanitarian approach to leadership. The artful leader, he argues, should recognize human diversity and make full use of his or her employees' gifts. Further, he believes, a leader is responsible not just for the health of a company's financial assets, but for its ethics. Advocating management through persuasion, and the exercise of democratic participation rather than concentrated power, he favors covenantal relationships with employees that rest on shared purpose, dignity and choice. The author stresses the need for communication, but his only direct guidance concerns the need for job performance reviews and self-evaluation.
Publishers Weekly