Sign-In
Cart
The Science Behind Leadership Transformation: Evidence Based Principles for Leading Organizations
Paperback
Business GeneralGeneral PsychologyGeneral Sociology
Publisher Price: $19.99
Publisher: J. M. Locke
Published: Mar 23 2026
Pages: 332
Weight: 0.98
Height: 0.74 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Most leadership books tell you what great leaders do.
This one tells you why it works-and why most change efforts don't.
Somewhere between 60 and 70 percent of organizational change initiatives fail. Not because the strategy was wrong. Not because the leaders weren't committed. But because the people responsible for leading change didn't understand the one thing that determines whether transformation sticks or collapses:
Human beings resist change for predictable, neurological reasons-and most leaders are fighting those reasons instead of working with them.
The Science of Leadership Transformation is the book that changes how you lead change. Drawing on more than sixty years of peer-reviewed research in neuroscience, behavioral economics, organizational psychology, and social science, it gives leaders the evidence-based framework that separates the 30 percent of transformations that succeed from the 70 percent that don't.
This is not motivational content dressed up as research. Every claim is sourced. Every finding is accurately represented. And the implications are specific enough to change what you do on Monday morning.
Here is what the research actually shows:
The single biggest driver of team engagement is not culture programs, compensation, or leadership vision-it's the immediate manager. Gallup's data from thirty million employees across 195 countries shows managers explain the majority of why some teams are deeply engaged and others are not.
Change doesn't spread uniformly. It moves through populations in a mathematically predictable sequence-and research shows that genuine commitment from just 25 percent of the relevant population is sufficient to tip an entire organizational culture, rapidly and permanently.
The human brain processes organizational change as physical danger. The same neural circuits that evolved to protect us from predators activate when roles shift, hierarchies change, or certainty disappears. Leaders who understand the five specific threat triggers-and how to address them-produce measurably better outcomes than those who don't.
Culture is not values on a wall. It is the aggregate of habitual behaviors that people enact automatically. Changing culture means changing habits-and habits live in a part of the brain that willpower cannot reliably override.
Transformational leadership produces effects roughly double those of management by reward and consequence-across every outcome studied in one of the most cited meta-analyses in organizational psychology.
Twenty-one chapters. Sixty years of research. One integrated framework.
You will learn the mathematics of how change spreads and how many committed people it takes to make it inevitable. You will understand the psychology of why people resist even beneficial change-and what actually moves them. You will have the neuroscience of threat response, habit formation, flow states, and psychological safety explained in terms specific enough to act on. And you will see how engagement, tribal culture, participation, and organizational measurement work together as the foundation that either sustains or undermines everything else.
Ideal for: Executives, senior leaders, managers, change agents, MBA students, organizational development professionals, and anyone who has ever led a transformation and wondered why it was harder than it should have been.
Also from
Locke, J. M.
The Art of Leadership Transformation: Philosophy, Wisdom, and the Practice of Leading
Locke, J. M.
Paperback
Also in
General Sociology
I Can't Believe I Did That: The Game That Gives You Points for Sharing Awkward, Awesome, and Unforgettable Memories: Card Games
Nadelberg, David
Katcher, Neil
Other
Designed for Hi-Fi Living: The Vinyl LP in Midcentury America
Borgerson, Janet
Schroeder, Jonathan
Paperback
Guerrilleros and Neighbours in Arms: Identities & Cultures of Anti-Fascist Resistance in Spain
Marco
Paperback
Urban Revolutions: Urbanisation and (Neo-)Colonialism in Transatlantic Context
Kipfer, Stefan
Paperback
The Destiny of Modern Societies: The Calvinist Predestination of a New Society
Zafirovski, Milan
Paperback
The Agrarian Seeds of Empire: The Political Economy of Agriculture in Us State Building
Bauerly, Brad
Paperback
The Sociogony: Social Facts and the Ontology of Objects, Things, and Monsters
Worrell, Mark P.
Paperback
Revolution and Its Alternatives: Other Marxisms, Other Empowerments, Other Priorities
Brass, Tom
Paperback
How to Be Less Stupid about Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide
Fleming, Crystal M.
Hardcover
The Day It Finally Happens: Alien Contact, Dinosaur Parks, Immortal Humans--And Other Possible Phenomena
Pearl, Mike
Paperback
Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community's Assets
Kretzmann, John P.
Paperback
Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World
McNeill, J. R.
Paperback
Too Many People?: Population, Immigration, and the Environmental Crisis
Angus, Ian
Butler, Simon
Paperback
Screening Out the Past: The Birth of Mass Culture and the Motion Picture Industry
May, Lary
Paperback
The Clash of Globalizations: Neo-Liberalism, the Third Way and Anti-Globalization
Kiely, Ray
Paperback
Aging Out: An Exploration of Caregiving, Community, and How Americans Grow Old
Schiller, Lucy
Hardcover
Pay Attention: How the Algorithms and Media Wars Are Suppressing Truth and Rewiring Your Brain
Pakman, David
Hardcover
Shadow Before the Flame: The Hindenburg Disaster and the Prelude to War
Katz, Catherine Grace
Hardcover
There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
Goldstone, Brian
Paperback
If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All
Soares, Nate
Yudkowsky, Eliezer
Hardcover
AI for Good: How Real People Are Using Artificial Intelligence to Fix Things That Matter
Tyrangiel, Josh
Hardcover
The Story of Your Life: How Social Media Shapes the Way We Experience Everything
Jezer-Morton, Kathryn
Hardcover
The New Dark Ages: The Death of Reading and the Dawn of the Post-Literate Society
Marriott, James
Hardcover
An American Girl: How a Billion-Dollar Doll and Its Unlikely Founder Changed Girlhood Forever
Fitzsimons, Amanda
Hardcover
American Alt: A True Story of Madness and Friendship in a Fractured Country
Lockhart, Chris
Hardcover
The Goddess That Failed: Feminism's Unending War against Men, Families, and Civilization Itself
Fiamengo, Janice
Paperback
Decreation: Poetry, Essays, Opera (by the Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature)
Carson, Anne
Paperback
Andy's Bravo Scrapbook: Twenty Years Behind the Scenes of the Real Housewives and the Bravoverse
Cohen, Andy
Hardcover
Mailman: My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home
Grant, Stephen Starring
Paperback
Doing Small Things with Great Love: How Everyday Humanitarians Are Changing the World
Eubank, Sharon
Hardcover
Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom Is Wrong--and What You Really Need to Know
Oster, Emily
Paperback
The Culting of America: What Makes a Cult and Why We Love Them
Mestyanek Young, Daniella
Reed, Amy
Hardcover
Like, Follow, Subscribe: Influencer Kids and the Cost of a Childhood Online
Latifi, Fortesa
Hardcover
There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
Goldstone, Brian
Hardcover
Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement
Davis, Angela Y.
Paperback
Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering
Gladwell, Malcolm
Paperback
Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves
Gilbert, Sophie
Paperback
The Power Broker (Pulitzer Prize Winner): Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
Caro, Robert A.
Paperback
The Tribe and I Have Spoken: The Definitive (Unofficial) Lore and Legacy from the Game's Smartest Surviving Loser
Kavutskiy, Alex
Cesternino, Rob
Hardcover
Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care
Hayes, Kelly
Kaba, Mariame
Paperback
Why We Ask Why: The Science of Explanation and the Human Drive to Understand
Lombrozo, Tania
Hardcover
Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the Automobile
Gordon, Doug
Naparstek, Aaron
Goodyear, Sarah
Hardcover
Scream with Me: Horror Films and the Rise of American Feminism (1968-1980)
Johnson, Eleanor
Hardcover
Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI
Veliz, Carissa
Hardcover
Who We Are Becoming Matters: The Courage, Wisdom, and Aloha We Need in a Timeplace of Collapse
Wong, Norma Kaweloku
Paperback
The Agatha Christie Cure: What Reading the Queen of Crime Taught Me about Life
Rentzenbrink, Cathy
Hardcover
Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster
Higginbotham, Adam
Paperback
The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us about America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny
Strauss, William
Howe, Neil
Paperback
The Unsettling of America (50th Anniversary Edition): Culture and Agriculture
Berry, Wendell
Paperback
Our Minds Were Always Free: A History of How Black Brilliance Was Exploited--And the Fight to Retake Control
Davis, Lisa E.
Hardcover
How to Break Up with Your Phone, Revised Edition: The 30-Day Digital Detox Plan
Price, Catherine
Paperback
From Life Itself: Turkey, Istanbul, and a Neighborhood in the Age of Erdoğan
Hansen, Suzy
Hardcover
Te vas a morir y todavía no has empezado a vivir: 29 principios para vivir mejor (y con más sentido)
Moreno Montana, Uli
Falces, Laura
Paperback
Obsolete: The AI Industry's Trillion Dollar Race to Replace Us--And How to Stop It
Lovely, Garrison
Paperback
Street Smarts: Trust Your Instincts, Outsmart Danger, and Stay Safe in a World That Isn't
Eve, Dannah
Hardcover
One Bad Mother: In Praise of Psycho Housewives, Stage Parents, Momfluencers, and Other Women We Love to Hate
Dickson, Ej
Hardcover