January 26, 2006 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Leadership Can Be Taught: A Bold Approach for a Complex World
by Sharon Daloz Parks
Managers should rely on their own experiences, instead of modeling their leadership style on those they have observed or read about, says Ronald Heifetz, a professor at the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
In this book, Sharon Daloz Parks, director of Leadership for the New Commons, a program of the Whidbey Institute, in Clinton, Wash., distills five years of Mr. Heifetz’s lectures at Harvard.
The lectures focus on what he calls “case in point” leadership theory, an approach that places special emphasis not on natural charisma, but on creating a “presence” that encourages others to respond to a leader, rather than simply admire him.
In the book, Ms. Parks follows up with some of Mr. Heifetz’s students to see how the approach works in practice. She interviews Andres Alvarez, who now develops community-health projects through the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Before he went to Harvard and became Mr. Heifetz’s student, Mr. Alvarez used grant money to create a network of sewers in Bolivia, a project that ultimately failed when his focus on following procedures came at the expense of the head engineer’s needs.
However, Mr. Alvarez says that when he returned to Bolivia and used Mr. Heifetz’s leadership techniques on subsequent projects, he had learned to adapt to the needs and knowledge of his employees, rather than making all the decisions himself.
He says he learned to find ways to support his management team, as when he helped a young supervisor gain acceptance from his unwelcoming colleagues. Mr. Alvarez showed the workers that their new boss wanted to help them do better in achieving their mission: bringing good health care to those who need it. That focus made them get over any personal concerns they might have had about the supervisor’s inexperience, Ms. Parks says.
Publisher: Harvard Business School Publishing, 300 North Beacon Street, Watertown, Mass. 02472; (617) 783-7500 or (800) 988-0886; fax (617) 783-7555; http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu; 287 pages; $29.95; ISBN 1-59139-309-4.
