he wisdoms printed on strips of paper held within fortune cookies can be amusing, downright eerie or thought provoking. Anyone who leads, whether it's as the head of a small group, a large organization or an entire nation, might find pause to consider this one:

"You are often unaware of the effect you have on others."

If you're in charge of a sales team, do you stop often enough to consider how those people see you? If you're a senior-level executive, would the people working for you agree with your own assessment of your management skills?

The ways that leaders make decisions and act on them, as well as the decisions and actions themselves, always impact the people around them. Steven Sample, author of "The Contrarian's Guide to Leadership," is well qualified to comment on the art of contrarian leadership and seems to have an unusually sensitive grasp of this concept.

He has spent most of his career in academia-as both instructor (he holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering) and administrator (he has held senior leadership positions at three major research universities over 27 years, including serving as President of the University of Southern California since 1991.)

While not everyone is meant to lead, leadership can be taught, an idea certainly put forth in numerous books on career advancement. The difference here is that, "The purpose of this book is to get you to think about leaders and leadership from a fresh and original point of view-from what I like to call the contrarian point of view."

Sample insists you don't lead effectively by mimicking a famous leader from the past. He does not suggest running counter to all conventional wisdom and thinking, however; the idea is to break free, even momentarily, from what everyone else holds true to discover your own creative way to approach leadership.

He calls this process "thinking gray"; he advises readers not to form opinions about ideas or people "unless and until" they have to, contrary to the commonly-held belief that leaders are proactive and immediate decision makers. In fact, Sample says leaders should avoid making decisions as often as possible, and instead leave it to their "lieutenants."

Thinking gray involves absorbing as much information as you possibly can from as many sources as possible, but to truly rely on only a few unexpected ones. Contrarian leaders are not only well read, they read what the competition does not.

Sample says that because of the "herd mentality" of the media, newspapers should be read mainly for their entertainment value. Instead, leaders should read what he calls civilization's "super-texts": the texts of the world's major religions and works by Aristotle, Plato, Virgil, Homer, Machiavelli and Shakespeare, among others.

He believes that relying on experts can be counterproductive to a leader's ultimate goal; instead, leaders should trust the opinions of their advisors and colleagues.

As you might expect, a book on leadership written by a man with a background like Sample's tends to be on the cerebral side. Early in the book, he discusses the importance of leadership to humanity, and what's essential for good leadership (morals and ethics, a theme reiterated in a later chapter.)

The book is easy to read, despite Sample's treatises on political leaders, philosophers and philosophy and great figures throughout history. (He seems to be particularly knowledgeable on the subject of Machiavelli's works.)

He presents a very different approach to the art of leadership than you'll hear from other authors or motivational speakers discussing success and excellence.

His point of view might come from a different vantage point than the average salesperson's, but by applying a little contrarian thinking, readers should be able to identify at least a few points of inspiration, whether they're leaders or not.

In your job, do you report to a boss? Sample describes how an effective leader works for the people who work for him or her; you might glean an idea or two from this discussion on ways to improve your role at work. Whether or not we're leading universities, corporations or governments, we often find ourselves making decsions or guiding and advising others-family members, friends, coworkers.

Sample's comments about leaders coming to terms with morality and ethics can be applied to many aspects in our everyday lives: Each person's beliefs influence his or her decisions, and even if we're not making life and death decisions, we still have to sleep at night. At the end of the day, what are we willing to toss and turn over all night long?

The Contrarian's Guide to Leadership
By Steven B. Sample
Forward by Warren Bennis

©Jossey-Bass
A Wiley Company
San Francisco, 2002
ISBN 0-7879-5587-6
(Hardback) 192 pages