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The Elgar Encyclopedia of Leadership

Gareth contributed three original entries to the Elgar Encyclopedia of Leadership (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2025), a comprehensive reference work exploring key concepts shaping leadership across global contexts. His chapters draw from both his practice leading complex international projects and his research at Henley Business School.

Gareth authored the following entries:

1. Confidence

Chapter 15
This chapter examines confidence as a foundational dimension of leadership, not as personality, but as a cultivated capability. It explores self-efficacy, intuition, calculated risk-taking, growth mindset, emotional intelligence, and the organisational conditions that reinforce or erode confidence. Drawing from Bandura, Dweck, Goleman, and Csikszentmihalyi, Gareth frames confidence as essential to creativity, resilience, and decision-making in complex environments.

2. Flexibility

Chapter 37
This entry argues for flexibility as a strategic imperative in a volatile world. Gareth analyses organisational adaptability, cultural intelligence, emergent strategy, and the role of transformational leadership in cultivating environments that support change. The chapter situates flexibility as a core competency of resilient organisations - linking it to decentralisation, autonomy, digital transformation, and psychological readiness for change.

3. Turnaround

Chapter 131
This chapter explores how leaders diagnose, stabilise, and relaunch underperforming organisations. Gareth synthesises research on decline, structural reorientation, solution design, innovation-led recovery, and change implementation. He emphasises the dual demands of analytical rigour and human-centred leadership, recognising that turnarounds require not only decisive action, but cultural realignment, trust-building, and sustained organisational learning.

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Critical Acclaim

‘Throughout history the call has been for leaders to take the helm, but what we truly need is a broader understanding of leadership. The Elgar Encyclopedia of Leadership provides us with 138 concise entries on leadership from classical to contemporary perspectives in management, psychology, sociology, and ethics by 50 engaged scholars. Such an impressive collection of the “the good, the bad, and the ugly” of leadership inspires further reading. The Encyclopedia is a highly recommended resource for scholars, students, and practitioners.’


– Lena Zander, Uppsala University, Sweden