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On Leadership

If you read nothing else on leadership, read these 10 articles. We’ve combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles on leadership and selected the most important ones to help you maximize your own and your organization’s performance.

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Harvard Business Review on Communicating Effectively

Harvard Business Review on Increasing Customer Loyalty

Harvard Business Review on Making Smart Decisions

Harvard Business Review on Winning Negotiations

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A Crucibles of Leadership by Warren G. Bennis and Robert J. Thomas

AS LIFELONG STUDENTS OF LEADERSHIP, we are fascinated with the notion of what makes a leader. Why is it that certain people seem to naturally inspire confidence, loyalty, and hard work, while others (who may have just as much vision and smarts) stumble, again and again? It’s a timeless question, and there’s no simple answer. But we have come to believe it has something to do with the different ways that people deal with adversity. Indeed, our recent research has led us to conclude that one of the most reliable indicators and predictors of true leadership is an individual’s ability to find meaning in nega- tive events and to learn from even the most trying circumstances. Put another way, the skills required to conquer adversity and emerge stronger and more committed than ever are the same ones that make for extraordinary leaders.

Take Sidney Harman. Thirty-four years ago, the then-48-year-old businessman was holding down two executive positions. He was the chief executive of Harman Kardon (now Harman International), the audio components company he had cofounded, and he was serving as president of Friends World College, now Friends World Program, an experimental Quaker school on Long Island whose essential phi- losophy is that students, not their teachers, are responsible for their education. Juggling the two jobs, Harman was living what he calls a “bifurcated life,” changing clothes in his car and eating lunch as he

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drove between Harman Kardon offices and plants and the Friends World campus. One day while at the college, he was told his com- pany’s factory in Bolivar, Tennessee, was having a crisis.

He immediately rushed to the Bolivar factory, a facility that was, as Harman now recalls, “raw, ugly, and, in many ways, demeaning.” The problem, he found, had erupted in the polish and buff depart- ment, where a crew of a dozen workers, mostly African-Americans, did the dull, hard work of polishing mirrors and other parts, often under unhealthy conditions. The men on the night shift were sup- posed to get a coffee break at 10 PM. When the buzzer that an- nounced the workers’ break went on the fritz, management arbitrarily decided to postpone the break for ten minutes, when an- other buzzer was scheduled to sound. But one worker, “an old black man with an almost biblical name, Noah B. Cross,” had “an epiphany,” as Harman describes it. “He said, literally, to his fellow workers, ‘I don’t work for no buzzer. The buzzer works for me. It’s my job to tell me when it’s ten o’clock. I got me a watch. I’m not wait- ing another ten minutes. I’m going on my coffee break.’ And all 12 guys took their coffee break, and, of course, all hell broke loose.”

The worker’s principled rebellion—his refusal to be cowed by management’s senseless rule—was, in turn, a revelation to Harman: “The technology is there to serve the men, not the reverse,” he re- members realizing. “I suddenly had this awakening that everything I was doing at the college had appropriate applications in business.” In the ensuing years, Harman revamped the factory and its work- ings, turning it into a kind of campus—offering classes on the prem- ises, including piano lessons, and encouraging the workers to take most of the responsibility for running their workplace. Further, he created an environment where dissent was not only tolerated but also encouraged. The plant’s lively independent newspaper, the Bolivar Mirror, gave workers a creative and emotional outlet—and they enthusiastically skewered Harman in its pages.

Harman had, unexpectedly, become a pioneer of participative management, a movement that continues to influence the shape of workplaces around the world. The concept wasn’t a grand idea con- ceived in the CEO’s office and imposed on the plant, Harman says. It

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Idea in Brief What enables one leader to inspire confidence, loyalty, and hard work, while others—with equal vision and intelligence—stumble? How individuals deal with adver- sity provides a clue.

Extraordinary leaders find meaning in—and learn from—the most neg- ative events. Like phoenixes rising

from the ashes, they emerge from adversity stronger, more confident in themselves and their purpose, and more committed to their work.

Such transformative events are called crucibles—a severe test or trial. Crucibles are intense, often traumatic—and always unplanned.

grew organically out of his going down to Bolivar to, in his words, “put out this fire.” Harman’s transformation was, above all, a cre- ative one. He had connected two seemingly unrelated ideas and created a radically different approach to management that recog- nized both the economic and humane benefits of a more collegial workplace. Harman went on to accomplish far more during his ca- reer. In addition to founding Harman International, he served as the deputy secretary of commerce under Jimmy Carter. But he always looked back on the incident in Bolivar as the formative event in his professional life, the moment he came into his own as a leader.

The details of Harman’s story are unique, but their significance is not. In interviewing more than 40 top leaders in business and the public sector over the past three years, we were surprised to find that all of them—young and old—were able to point to intense, often trau- matic, always unplanned experiences that had transformed them and had become the sources of their distinctive leadership abilities.

We came to call the experiences that shape leaders “crucibles,” after the vessels medieval alchemists used in their attempts to turn base metals into gold. For the leaders we interviewed, the crucible experience was a trial and a test, a point of deep self-reflection that forced them to question who they were and what mattered to them. It required them to examine their values, question their assump- tions, hone their judgment. And, invariably, they emerged from the crucible stronger and more sure of themselves and their purpose— changed in some fundamental way.

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Idea in Practice The Crucible Experience

Crucibles force leaders into deep self-reflection, where they exam- ine their values, question their assumptions, and hone their judg- ment.

Example: Sidney Harman— co-founder of audio compo- nents company Harman Kardon and president of an experimen- tal college encouraging student-driven education— encountered his crucible when “all hell broke loose” in one of his factories. After managers postponed a scheduled break because the buzzer didn’t sound, workers rebelled. “I don’t work for no buzzer,” one proclaimed.

To Harman, this refusal to bow to management’s senseless rule suggested a surprising link between student-driven educa- tion and business. Pioneering participative management,

Harman transformed his plant into a kind of campus, offering classes and encouraging dis- sent. He considers the rebel- lion the formative event in his career—the moment he became a true leader.

The Many Shapes of Crucibles

Some crucibles are violent and life-threatening (encounters with prejudice, illness); others are more positive, yet profoundly challeng- ing (such as demanding bosses or mentors). Whatever the shape, leaders create a narrative telling how they met the challenge and became better for it.

Example: While working for former Atlanta mayor Robert F. Maddox, Vernon Jordan endured repeated racial heck- ling from Maddox. Rather than letting Maddox’s sadism de- stroy him, Jordan interpreted the behavior as a desperate lashing out by someone who

Leadership crucibles can take many forms. Some are violent, life- threatening events. Others are more prosaic episodes of self-doubt. But whatever the crucible’s nature, the people we spoke with were able, like Harman, to create a narrative around it, a story of how they were challenged, met the challenge, and became better leaders. As we studied these stories, we found that they not only told us how in- dividual leaders are shaped but also pointed to some characteristics that seem common to all leaders—characteristics that were formed, or at least exposed, in the crucible.

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knew the era of the Old South was ending. Jordan’s response empowered him to become an esteemed lawyer and presidential advisor.

Essential Leadership Skills

Four skills enable leaders to learn from adversity:

1. Engage others in shared meaning. For example, Sidney Harman mobilized employees around a radical new manage- ment approach—amid a factory crisis.

2. A distinctive, compelling voice. With words alone, col- lege president Jack Coleman preempted a violent clash between the football team and anti-Vietnam War demonstra- tors threatening to burn the American flag. Coleman’s suggestion to the protestors? Lower the flag, wash it, then put it back up.

3. Integrity. Coleman’s values prevailed during the emotionally charged face-off between antiwar demonstra- tors and irate football players.

4. Adaptive capacity. This most critical skill includes the ability to grasp context, and hardiness. Grasping context requires weighing many factors (e.g., how different people will interpret a gesture). Without this quality, leaders can’t connect with constituents.

Hardiness provides the perse- verance and toughness needed to remain hopeful despite disaster. For instance, Michael Klein made millions in real es- tate during his teens, lost it all by age 20—then built several more businesses, including transforming a tiny software company into a Hewlett- Packard acquisition.

Learning from Difference

A crucible is, by definition, a transformative experience through which an individual comes to a new or an altered sense of identity. It is perhaps not surprising then that one of the most common types of crucibles we documented involves the experience of prejudice. Being a victim of prejudice is particularly traumatic because it forces an individual to confront a distorted picture of him- or herself, and it often unleashes profound feelings of anger, bewilderment, and even

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withdrawal. For all its trauma, however, the experience of prejudice is for some a clarifying event. Through it, they gain a clearer vision of who they are, the role they play, and their place in the world.

Consider, for example, Liz Altman, now a Motorola vice presi- dent, who was transformed by the year she spent at a Sony cam- corder factory in rural Japan, where she faced both estrangement and sexism. It was, says Altman, “by far, the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” The foreign culture—particularly its emphasis on groups over individuals—was both a shock and a challenge to a young American woman. It wasn’t just that she felt lonely in an alien world. She had to face the daunting prospect of carving out a place for herself as the only woman engineer in a plant, and nation, where women usually serve as low-level assistants and clerks known as “office ladies.”

Another woman who had come to Japan under similar circum- stances had warned Altman that the only way to win the men’s re- spect was to avoid becoming allied with the office ladies. But on her very first morning, when the bell rang for a coffee break, the men headed in one direction and the women in another—and the women saved her a place at their table, while the men ignored her. Instinct told Altman to ignore the warning rather than insult the women by rebuffing their invitation.

Over the next few days, she continued to join the women during breaks, a choice that gave her a comfortable haven from which to ob- serve the unfamiliar office culture. But it didn’t take her long to no- tice that some of the men spent the break at their desks reading magazines, and Altman determined that she could do the same on occasion. Finally, after paying close attention to the conversations around her, she learned that several of the men were interested in mountain biking. Because Altman wanted to buy a mountain bike, she approached them for advice. Thus, over time, she established herself as something of a free agent, sometimes sitting with the women and other times engaging with the men.

And as it happened, one of the women she’d sat with on her very first day, the department secretary, was married to one of the engi- neers. The secretary took it upon herself to include Altman in social

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gatherings, a turn of events that probably wouldn’t have occurred if Altman had alienated her female coworkers on that first day. “Had I just gone to try to break in with [the men] and not had her as an ally, it would never have happened,” she says.

Looking back, Altman believes the experience greatly helped her gain a clearer sense of her personal strengths and capabilities, preparing her for other difficult situations. Her tenure in Japan taught her to observe closely and to avoid jumping to conclusions based on cultural assumptions—invaluable skills in her current posi- tion at Motorola, where she leads efforts to smooth alliances with other corporate cultures, including those of Motorola’s different re- gional operations.

Altman has come to believe that she wouldn’t have been as able to do the Motorola job if she hadn’t lived in a foreign country and expe- rienced the dissonance of cultures: “. . . even if you’re sitting in the same room, ostensibly agreeing . . . unless you understand the frame of reference, you’re probably missing a bunch of what’s going on.” Altman also credits her crucible with building her confidence—she feels that she can cope with just about anything that comes her way.

People can feel the stigma of cultural differences much closer to home, as well. Muriel (“Mickie”) Siebert, the first woman to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, found her crucible on the Wall Street of the 1950s and 1960s, an arena so sexist that she couldn’t get a job as a stockbroker until she took her first name off her résumé and substituted a genderless initial. Other than the secretaries and the occasional analyst, women were few and far between. That she was Jewish was another strike against her at a time, she points out, when most of big business was “not nice” to either women or Jews. But Siebert wasn’t broken or defeated. Instead, she emerged stronger, more focused, and more determined to change the status quo that excluded her.

When we interviewed Siebert, she described her way of address- ing anti-Semitism—a technique that quieted the offensive com- ments of her peers without destroying the relationships she needed to do her job effectively. According to Siebert, at the time it was part

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of doing business to have a few drinks at lunch. She remembers, “Give somebody a couple of drinks, and they would talk about the Jews.” She had a greeting card she used for those occasions that went like this:

Roses are reddish, Violets are bluish, In case you don’t know, I am Jewish.

Siebert would have the card hand-delivered to the person who had made the anti-Semitic remarks, and on the card she had written, “Enjoyed lunch.” As she recounts, “They got that card in the after- noon, and I never had to take any of that nonsense again. And I never embarrassed anyone, either.” It was because she was unable to get credit for the business she was bringing in at any of the large Wall Street firms that she bought a seat on the New York Stock Exchange and started working for herself.

In subsequent years, she went on to found Muriel Siebert & Com- pany (now Siebert Financial Corporation) and has dedicated herself to helping other people avoid some of the difficulties she faced as a young professional. A prominent advocate for women in business and a leader in developing financial products directed at women, she’s also devoted to educating children about financial opportuni- ties and responsibility.

We didn’t interview lawyer and presidential adviser Vernon Jordan for this article, but he, too, offers a powerful reminder of how prejudice can prove transformational rather than debilitating. In Vernon Can Read! A Memoir (Public Affairs, 2001), Jordan describes the vicious baiting he was subjected to as a young man. The man who treated him in this offensive way was his employer, Robert F. Maddox. Jordan served the racist former mayor of Atlanta at dinner, in a white jacket, with a napkin over his arm. He also functioned as Maddox’s chauffeur. Whenever Maddox could, he would derisively announce, “Vernon can read!” as if the literacy of a young African- American were a source of wonderment.

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Geeks and Geezers

WE DIDN’ T SET OUT TO LEARN about crucibles. Our research for this arti- cle and for our new book, Geeks and Geezers, was actually designed to uncover the ways that era influences a leader’s motivation and aspirations. We interviewed 43 of today’s top leaders in business and the public sector, limiting our subjects to people born in or before 1925, or in or after 1970. To our delight, we learned a lot about how age and era affect leadership style.

Our geeks and geezers (the affectionate shorthand we eventually used to de- scribe the two groups) had very different ideas about paying your dues, work- life balance, the role of heroes, and more. But they also shared some striking similarities—among them a love of learning and strong sense of values. Most intriguing, though, both our geeks and our geezers told us again and again how certain experiences inspired them, shaped them, and, indeed, taught them to lead. And so, as the best research often does, our work turned out to be even more interesting than we thought it would be. We continued to ex- plore the influences of era—our findings are described in our book—but at the same time we probed for stories of these crucible experiences. These are the stories we share with you here.

Subjected to this type of abuse, a lesser man might have allowed Maddox to destroy him. But in his memoir, Jordan gives his own interpretation of Maddox’s sadistic heckling, a tale that empowered Jordan instead of embittering him. When he looked at Maddox through the rearview mirror, Jordan did not see a powerful member of Georgia’s ruling class. He saw a desperate anachronism, a person who lashed out because he knew his time was up. As Jordan writes about Maddox, “His half-mocking, half-serious comments about my education were the death rattle of his culture. When he saw that I was . . . crafting a life for myself that would make me a man in . . . ways he thought of as being a man, he was deeply unnerved.”

Maddox’s cruelty was the crucible that, consciously or not, Jordan imbued with redemptive meaning. Instead of lashing out or being paralyzed with hatred, Jordan saw the fall of the Old South and imag- ined his own future freed of the historical shackles of racism. His ability to organize meaning around a potential crisis turned it into the crucible around which his leadership was forged.

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Reinvention in the Extreme: The Power of Neoteny

ALL OF OUR INTERVIEW SUBJECTS described their crucibles as opportu- nities for reinvention—for taking stock of their lives and finding meaning in circumstances many people would see as daunting and potentially incapaci- tating. In the extreme, this capacity for reinvention comes to resemble eter- nal youth—a kind of vigor, openness, and an enduring capacity for wonder that is the antithesis of stereotyped old age.

We borrowed a term from biology—“neoteny,” which, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, means “retention of juvenile characteristics in the adults of a species”—to describe this quality, this delight in lifelong learn- ing, which every leader we interviewed displayed, regardless of age. To a per- son, they were full of energy, curiosity, and confidence that the world is a place of wonders spread before them like an endless feast.

Robert Galvin, former Motorola chairman now in his late 70s, spends his weekends windsurfing. Arthur Levitt, Jr., former SEC chairman who turned 71 this year, is an avid Outward Bound trekker. And architect Frank Gehry is now a 72-year-old ice hockey player. But it’s not only an affinity for physical activ- ity that characterizes neoteny—it’s an appetite for learning and self- development, a curiosity and passion for life.

To understand why this quality is so powerful in a leader, it might help to take a quick look at the scientific principle behind it—neoteny as an evolutionary engine. It is the winning, puppyish quality of certain ancient wolves that al- lowed them to evolve into dogs. Over thousands of years, humans favored wolves that were the friendliest, most approachable, and most curious. Nat- urally, people were most drawn to the wolves least likely to attack without warning, that readily locked eyes with them, and that seemed almost human in their eager response to people; the ones, in short, that stayed the most like puppies. Like human infants, they have certain physical qualities that elicit a nurturing response in human adults.

Prevailing over Darkness

Some crucible experiences illuminate a hidden and suppressed area of the soul. These are often among the harshest of crucibles, involv- ing, for instance, episodes of illness or violence. In the case of Sidney Rittenberg, now 79, the crucible took the form of 16 years of unjust imprisonment, in solitary confinement, in Communist China. In 1949

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When infants see an adult, they often respond with a smile that begins small and slowly grows into a radiant grin that makes the adult feel at center of the universe. Recent studies of bonding indicate that nursing and other intimate interactions with an infant cause the mother’s system to be flooded with oxytocin, a calming, feel-good hormone that is a powerful antidote to corti- sol, the hormone produced by stress. Oxytocin appears to be the glue that produces bonding. And the baby’s distinctive look and behaviors cause oxytocin to be released in the fortunate adult. That appearance—the one that pulls an involuntary “aaah” out of us whenever we see a baby—and those oxytocin-inducing behaviors allow infants to recruit adults to be their nurtur- ers, essential if such vulnerable and incompletely developed creatures are to survive.

The power of neoteny to recruit protectors and nurturers was vividly illus- trated in the former Soviet Union. Forty years ago, a Soviet scientist decided to start breeding silver foxes for neoteny at a Siberian fur farm. The goal was to create a tamer fox that would go with less fuss to slaughter than the typical silver fox. Only the least aggressive, most approachable animals were bred.

The experiment continued for 40 years, and today, after 35 generations, the farm is home to a breed of tame foxes that look and act more like juvenile foxes and even dogs than like their wild forebears. The physical changes in the animals are remarkable (some have floppy, dog-like ears), but what is truly stunning is the change neoteny has wrought in the human response to them. Instead of taking advantage of the fact that these neotenic animals don’t snap and snarl on the way to their deaths, their human keepers appear to have been recruited by their newly cute and endearing charges. The keep- ers and the foxes appear to have formed close bonds, so close that the keepers are trying to find ways to save the animals from slaughter.

Rittenberg was initially jailed, without explanation, by former friends in Chairman Mao Zedong’s government and spent his first year in total darkness when he wasn’t being interrogated. (Rittenberg later learned that his arrest came at the behest of Communist Party officials in Moscow, who had wrongly identified him as a CIA agent.) Thrown into jail, confined to a tiny, pitch-dark cell, Rittenberg did not

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rail or panic. Instead, within minutes, he remembered a stanza of verse, four lines recited to him when he was a small child:

They drew a circle that shut me out, Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win, We drew a circle that took them in!

That bit of verse (adapted from “Outwitted,” a poem by Edwin Markham) was the key to Rittenberg’s survival. “My God,” he thought, “there’s my strategy.” He drew the prison guards into his circle, developing relationships that would help him adapt to his confinement. Fluent in Chinese, he persuaded the guards to deliver him books and, eventually, provide a candle so that he could read. He also decided, after his first year, to devote himself to improving his mind—making it more scientific, more pure, and more dedicated to socialism. He believed that if he raised his consciousness, his cap- tors would understand him better. And when, over time, the years in the dark began to take an intellectual toll on him and he found his reason faltering, he could still summon fairy tales and childhood stories such as The Little Engine That Could and take comfort from their simple messages.

By contrast, many of Rittenberg’s fellow prisoners either lashed out in anger or withdrew. “They tended to go up the wall . . . They couldn’t make it. And I think the reason was that they didn’t under- stand . . . that happiness . . . is not a function of your circumstances; it’s a function of your outlook on life.”

Rittenberg’s commitment to his ideals continued upon his re- lease. His cell door opened suddenly in 1955, after his first six-year term in prison. He recounts, “Here was a representative of the cen- tral government telling me that I had been wronged, that the govern- ment was making a formal apology to me . . . and that they would do everything possible to make restitution.” When his captors offered him money to start a new life in the United States or to travel in Europe, Rittenberg declined, choosing instead to stay in China and continue his work for the Communist Party.

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And even after a second arrest, which put him into solitary confinement for ten years as retaliation for his support of open democracy during the Cultural Revolution, Rittenberg did not allow his spirit to be broken. Instead, he used his time in prison as an oppor- tunity to question his belief system—in particular, his commitment to Marxism and Chairman Mao. “In that sense, prison emancipated me,” he says.

Rittenberg studied, read, wrote, and thought, and he learned something about himself in the process: “I realized I had this great fear of being a turncoat, which . . . was so powerful that it prevented me from even looking at [my assumptions] . . . Even to question was an act of betrayal. After I got out . . . the scales fell away from my eyes and I understood that . . . the basic doctrine of arriving at democracy through dictatorship was wrong.”

What’s more, Rittenberg emerged from prison certain that ab- solutely nothing in his professional life could break him and went on to start a company with his wife. Rittenberg Associates is a consult- ing firm dedicated to developing business ties between the United States and China. Today, Rittenberg is as committed to his ideals—if not to his view of the best way to get there—as he was 50 years ago, when he was so severely tested.

Meeting Great Expectations

Fortunately, not all crucible experiences are traumatic. In fact, they can involve a positive, if deeply challenging, experience such as hav- ing a demanding boss or mentor. Judge Nathaniel R. Jones of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, for instance, attributes much of his success to his interaction with a splendid mentor. That mentor was J. Maynard Dickerson, a successful attorney—the first black city prosecutor in the United States—and editor of a local African- American newspaper.

Dickerson influenced Jones at many levels. For instance, the older man brought Jones behind the scenes to witness firsthand the great civil rights struggle of the 1950s, inviting him to sit in on con- versations with activists like Thurgood Marshall, Walter White, Roy

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Wilkins, and Robert C. Weaver. Says Jones, “I was struck by their re- solve, their humor . . . and their determination not to let the system define them. Rather than just feel beaten down, they turned it around.” The experience no doubt influenced the many important opinions Judge Jones has written in regard to civil rights.

Dickerson was both model and coach. His lessons covered every aspect of Jones’s intellectual growth and presentation of self, includ- ing schooling in what we now call “emotional intelligence.” Dicker- son set the highest standards for Jones, especially in the area of communication skills—a facility we’ve found essential to leader- ship. Dickerson edited Jones’s early attempts at writing a sports col- umn with respectful ruthlessness, in red ink, as Jones remembers to this day—marking up the copy so that it looked, as Jones says, “like something chickens had a fight over.” But Dickerson also took the time to explain every single mistake and why it mattered.

His mentor also expected the teenage Jones to speak correctly at all times and would hiss discreetly in his direction if he stumbled. Great expectations are evidence of great respect, and as Jones learned all the complex, often subtle lessons of how to succeed, he was motivated in no small measure by his desire not to disappoint the man he still calls “Mr. Dickerson.” Dickerson gave Jones the kind of intensive mentoring that was tantamount to grooming him for a kind of professional and moral succession—and Jones has indeed become an instrument for the profound societal change for which Dickerson fought so courageously as well. Jones found life-changing meaning in the attention Dickerson paid to him—attention fueled by a conviction that he, too, though only a teenager, had a vital role to play in society and an important destiny.

Another story of a powerful mentor came to us from Michael Klein, a young man who made millions in Southern California real estate while still in his teens, only to lose it by the time he turned 20 and then go on to start several other businesses. His mentor was his grandfather Max S. Klein, who created the paint-by-numbers fad that swept the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. Klein was only four or five years old when his grandfather approached him and of- fered to share his business expertise. Over the years, Michael Klein’s

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grandfather taught him to learn from and to cope with change, and the two spoke by phone for an hour every day until shortly before Max Klein’s death.

The Essentials of Leadership

In our interviews, we heard many other stories of crucible experi- ences. Take Jack Coleman, 78-year-old former president of Haver- ford College in Pennsylvania. He told us of one day, during the Vietnam War, when he heard that a group of students was planning to pull down the American flag and burn it—and that former mem- bers of the school’s football team were going to make sure the stu- dents didn’t succeed. Seemingly out of nowhere, Coleman had the idea to preempt the violence by suggesting that the protesting stu- dents take down the flag, wash it, and then put it back up—a crucible moment that even now elicits tremendous emotion in Coleman as he describes that day.

There’s also Common Cause founder John W. Gardner, who died earlier this year at 89. He identified his arduous training as a Marine during World War II as the crucible in which his leadership abilities emerged. Architect Frank Gehry spoke of the biases he experienced as a Jew in college. Jeff Wilke, a general manager at a major manu- facturer, told us of the day he learned that an employee had been killed in his plant—an experience that taught him that leadership was about much more than making quarterly numbers.

So, what allowed these people to not only cope with these diffi- cult situations but also learn from them? We believe that great lead- ers possess four essential skills, and, we were surprised to learn, these happen to be the same skills that allow a person to find mean- ing in what could be a debilitating experience. First is the ability to engage others in shared meaning. Consider Sidney Harman, who dived into a chaotic work environment to mobilize employees around an entirely new approach to management. Second is a dis- tinctive and compelling voice. Look at Jack Coleman’s ability to de- fuse a potentially violent situation with only his words. Third is a sense of integrity (including a strong set of values). Here, we point

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again to Coleman, whose values prevailed even during the emotion- ally charged clash between peace demonstrators and the angry (and strong) former football team members.

But by far the most critical skill of the four is what we call “adap- tive capacity.” This is, in essence, applied creativity—an almost mag- ical ability to transcend adversity, with all its attendant stresses, and to emerge stronger than before. It’s composed of two primary quali- ties: the ability to grasp context, and hardiness. The ability to grasp context implies an ability to weigh a welter of factors, ranging from how very different groups of people will interpret a gesture to being able to put a situation in perspective. Without this, leaders are utterly lost, because they cannot connect with their constituents. M. Douglas Ivester, who succeeded Roberto Goizueta at Coca-Cola, exhibited a woeful inability to grasp context, lasting just 28 months on the job. For example, he demoted his highest-ranked African-American em- ployee even as the company was losing a $200 million class-action suit brought by black employees—and this in Atlanta, a city with a powerful African-American majority. Contrast Ivester with Vernon Jordan. Jordan realized his boss’s time was up—not just his time in power, but the era that formed him. And so Jordan was able to see past the insults and recognize his boss’s bitterness for what it was— desperate lashing out.

Hardiness is just what it sounds like—the perseverance and toughness that enable people to emerge from devastating circum- stances without losing hope. Look at Michael Klein, who experi- enced failure but didn’t let it defeat him. He found himself with a single asset—a tiny software company he’d acquired. Klein built it into Transoft Networks, which Hewlett-Packard acquired in 1999. Consider, too, Mickie Siebert, who used her sense of humor to curtail offensive conversations. Or Sidney Rittenberg’s strength during his imprisonment. He drew on his personal memories and inner strength to emerge from his lengthy prison term without bitterness.

It is the combination of hardiness and ability to grasp context that, above all, allows a person to not only survive an ordeal, but

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to learn from it, and to emerge stronger, more engaged, and more committed than ever. These attributes allow leaders to grow from their crucibles, instead of being destroyed by them—to find oppor- tunity where others might find only despair. This is the stuff of true leadership.

Originally published in September 2002. Reprint R0209B

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