By Cameron Brown cbrown@postandcourier.com
Jul 16, 2024
FLORENCE — Francis Marion University Professor Joe Anniello looks at the qualities of good leaders in his new book “Sunken Leadership.”
Anniello has been successful in business and academics. His book “Sunken Leadership” goes into the depths of what it really means to be a leader and also explains how leadership and management are both personal.
In the book, Aniello brings the academic and corporate worlds together, since he was once apart of both.
“This is my first and probably my only book. It is almost like a capstone, with 20 years in the corporate world and 20 years in the academic world,” Aniello said.
Aniello has taught in FMU’s School of Business for the past 21 years, primarily in organizational leadership and human resource behavior. He also served as executive director of the Francis Marion University Center for Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management.
He holds a master’s degree in business administration in marketing from Fordham University in New York City and an doctorate of education from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. His dissertation was on “Increasing Creativity in Adults.”
Prior to his academic career, Aniello spent 20 years in corporate America.
The encouragement for writing the book came from his experience in leadership positions and a friend, Pam Bennett, who is a published author.
Author and cat behavior expert Pam Bennett has written 10 books about cats.
Anniello sent Bennett some of his essays. She said he puts his heart into what he does.
“I read the essays and I felt he’s a very good writer, so I suggested that he do a blog, which he took and ran with,” Bennett said.
That blog turned into a book that explains how most leaders are not leaders, he said.
A leader is more inclined to say “hey I want what I want but I also recognize that I deserve to get you something too. This is a win-win situation for all.”
Everyone is just trying to see their side, such as when a student feels entitled to get an “A” but not working very hard for that good grade, he said.
Managers are more like spoiled brats. “I want what I want and I want it now and if I don’t get what I want I’m going to make a big stink about it,” he said.
Aniello wrote this book to help people see the different sides of leadership from both sides because most people only see things from there side, he said.
“If it’s something different about my book, it is that I see things from both sides and that is what leaders do,” Aniello said.