Leadership is a hot topic these days, with Amazon.com listing no fewer than 16,826 titles on the subject. Notable among recent offerings was 2002's Primal Leadership, in which Case Western Reserve professor Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee, co-chair of the Teleos Leadership Institute, teamed up with emotional intelligence guru Daniel Goleman to explore the role of EI in business leadership.

In Resonant Leadership, their follow up to that book, Boyatzis and McKee champion the use of three tools — mindfulness, hope, and compassion (hereafter called MHC) — by business leaders as key to achieving resonance and renewal. What is MHC? Boyatzis and McKee describe mindfulness as "full consciousness of self, others, nature, and society," and tie it to Buddhist traditions as well as cognitive psychology. Hope "enables us to believe that the future we envision is attainable." Compassion is defined, in a Confucian sense, as "the emotional expression of the virtue of benevolence." Using these three tools, the authors argue, leaders can sustain and renew their creative energy, avoid the dissonance that results from stress and what they describe as the "Sacrifice Syndrome," and produce concrete, documentable results.

So far, so good, but with the exception of the last claim, is there really a need for another book on what is by now a familiar topic? As the authors note, "There is lots of information out there on leadership — some of it is excellent, and some of it is pure hogwash. We believe that there is a big difference between good advice on leadership and the trendy, empty words we so often read. How do you make the distinction?" The authors answer their own question by suggesting that good advice is based on (1) relevant real-life examples, (2) verifiable research, and (3) practical exercises and activities.

With respect to real-life examples, Boyatzis and McKee provide profiles of successful leaders from a variety of fields, including business, law, education, and politics. While often compelling and inspirational, however, none of the profiles makes a convincing case that MHC is the source of the profilees' success, and none is markedly different from the thumbnail sketches of accomplished leaders you can find in any business publication.

Moreover, because the authors are obviously fond of their subjects, the profiles are effusively complimentary and describe their subjects in terms that sometimes don't ring true. For example, one leader, the managing partner and COO of a major law firm, is praised for motivating his colleagues to improve their billing practices by organizing a competition and rewarding the winners with trinkets. But is that really a convincing example of the Confucian concept of compassion, as the authors suggest?

On the other hand, dissonant leaders who have lost their way are cut little slack, and although endnotes are not supplied for these pseudonymously identified failures, their public and private behavior, thought processes, and motivations are often described in embarrassing detail.

The book does not rely solely on anecdotal evidence to back its arguments, however. As the authors note, "Good advice should be verifiable. In other words, there should be solid research to support key ideas, concepts, and practices." And to their credit, the book is extensively endnoted (39 pages worth). But the quality of the notes varies widely, and a surprising number of the sources are themselves non-scholarly self-help books.

In contrast, almost every chapter (as well as a separate appendix) offers diagnostic exercises for the reader, most of them designed to identify problems rather than solutions — not necessarily a bad thing. But while many of the activities are challenging and thought-provoking, a good number leave the reader uncertain how to proceed with the information. For example, one exercise instructs the reader to trace the outline of a body with a pen or pencil and "circle areas that need your attention." Then what? Other exercises, while potentially worthwhile, are so confusingly presented that readers may be reluctant to give them a try.

In addition to these problems, the book suffers from some unfortunate editorial errors; Gandhi (the inspiration for one of the chapter titles) is misspelled, "literally" is confused with "figuratively," and some exercise instructions are badly garbled. There are also unexplained omissions. One of the authors' prime examples of resonant leadership, the headmistress of the Nkomo Primary School in South Africa, is mysteriously identified only as "Mrs. Zikhali," although her full name is easily obtainable from the Internet. Similarly, the book has endnotes but no bibliography, and the index seems incomplete (for example, there are no entries for Buddhism or Confucianism, although they are the sources for the authors' definitions of mindfulness and compassion). Such lapses do little to present the authors as serious, scholarly researchers.

So is Resonant Leadership worth a read? Surely mindfulness, hope, and compassion are worthy goals for everybody, including business leaders, but didn't we know that already? And while Boyatzis and McKee have produced a well-intentioned book filled with inspirational examples, is that enough to justify its existence in a cluttered publishing environment? Perhaps, but in this reviewer's opinion, the authors fail in their attempt to make a causal link between MHC and business success, and that is what would have set this book apart from the hundreds, if not thousands, of business titles that have already explored the topic.