Crucible of Leadership

Crucible of Leadership Paper details: On a Leadership experience in the past on discrimination, work ethics, cultural differences, racism, and crucibles. THE CRUCIBLE EXPERIENCE Crucibles force leaders into deep self-reflec tion, where they examine their values, question their assumptions, and hone their judgment. Example: Sidney Harman—co-founder of audio com- ponents company Harman Kardon and president of an experimental college en- couraging student-driven education— enc ountered 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 r ebelled. “I don’t work for no buzzer,” one proclaimed. To Harman, this refusal to bow to manage- ment’s senseless rule suggested a surpris- ing link between student-driven education and business. Pioneering participative man- agement, Harman transformed his plant into a kind of campus, offering classes and encouraging dissent. He considers the re- bellion the formative event in his career— the moment he became a true leader. T HE MANY SHAPES OF CRUCIBLES Some crucibles are violent and life-threaten ing (encounters with prejudice, illness); others are more positive, yet profoundly challenging (such as demanding bosses or mentors). Whatever the shape, leaders create a narrative t elling how they met the challenge and be- came better for it. Example: While working for former Atlanta mayor Robert F. Maddox, Vernon Jordan endured r epeated racial heckling from Maddox. R ather than letting Maddox’s sadism de- stroy him, Jordan interpreted the behavior as a desperate lashing out by someone who knew the era of the Old South was ending. Jordan’s response empowered him to become an esteemed lawyer and presi- dential advisor. ESSENTIAL LEADERSHIP SKILLS F our skills enable leaders to learn from adversity: 1. Engage others in shared meaning. For example, Sidney Harman mobilized employ ees around a radical new management app r oach— amid a factory crisis. 2. A distinctive, compelling voice. W ith wo r ds alone, college president Jack Coleman preempted a violent clash between the foot- ball team and anti-Vietnam War demonstra- t ors threatening to burn the American flag. C oleman’s suggestion to the protestors? Lo w er the flag, wash it, then put it back up. 3. Integrity. Coleman’s values prevailed dur- ing the emotionally charged face-off between antiwar demonstrators and irate football players. 4. Adaptive capacity. This most critical skill includes the ability to grasp context , and hardi- ness . Grasping context requires weighing many factors (e.g., how different people will interpret a gesture). Without this quality, lead ers can’t connect with constituents. Hardiness provides the perseverance and t oughness needed to remain hopeful despite disaster. For instance, Michael Klein made mil- lions in real estate during his teens, lost it all by age 20—then built several more busi- nesses, including transforming a tiny software company into a Hewlett-Packard acquisition. HBR A T L ARGE Crucibles of Leadership by Warren G. Bennis and Robert J. Thomas harvard business review • september 2002 pa ge 2 C OPYRIGHT © 2002 HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PUBLISHING CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Everyone is te sted by life, but only a few extract strength and wisdom from their mo st trying experience s. They’re the ones we call leaders. As lifelong students of leadership, we are fasci- nated 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 vi- sion and smarts) stumble, again and again? It’s a timeless question, and there’s no simple an- s wer. But we have come to believe it has some- thing to do with the different ways that people deal with adversity. Indeed, our recent re- search 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 negative events and to learn from ev en the most trying circumstances. Put an other way, the skills required to conquer adversity and emerge stronger and more committed than ever are the same ones that make for e xtr aordinary leaders. Ta ke Sidney Harman. Thirty-four years ago, the then-48-year-old businessman was hold- ing down two executive positions. He was the chief executive of Harman Kardon (now Har- m an International), the audio components c ompany he had cofounded, and he was ser vi ng as president of Friends World College, now Friends World Program, an experimental Q uaker school on Long Island whose essential philosophy 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 drove between Harman Ka r don offices and plants and the Friends W orld campus. One day while at the college, he was told his company’s factory in Bolivar, T ennessee, was having a crisis. He immediately rushed to the Bolivar fac- tory, a facility that was, as Harman now recalls, “raw, ugly, and, in many ways, demeaning.” The problem, he found, had erupted in the p olish and buff department, 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 supposed to get a coffee break at 10 PM . When the buzzer that announced the workers’ break went on Crucibles of Leadership • • • HBR A T L ARGE harvard business review • september 2002 page 3 the fritz, management arbitrarily decided to p ostpone the break for ten minutes, when an- other buzzer was scheduled to sound. But one worker, “an old black man with an almost bibli- c al name, Noah B. Cross,” had “an epiphany,” as Harman describes it. “He said, literally, to his f ellow 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 waiting another ten minutes. I’m going on my c offee break.’ And all 12 guys took their coffee break, and, of course, all hell broke loose.” The worker’s principled rebellion—his re- fusal 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 remembers realizing. “I sud- denly had this awakening that everything I was doing at the college had appropriate applica- tions in business.” In the ensuing years, Har- man revamped the factory and its workings, turning it into a kind of campus—offering classes on the premises, including piano les sons, and encouraging the workers to take most of the responsibility for running their workplace. Fu r ther, he created an environment where dis sent was not only tolerated but also encour- aged. The plant’s lively independent newspa- pe r, the Bolivar Mirror, gave workers a creative and emotional outlet—and they enthusiasti- c ally skewered Harman in its pages. Harman had, unexpectedly, become a pio- neer of participative management, a movement that continues to influence the shape of work- places around the world. The concept wasn’t a grand idea conceived in the CEO’s office and imposed on the plant, Harman says. It grew or- ganically out of his going down to Bolivar to, in his words, “put out this fire.” Harman’s trans- f ormation was, above all, a creative one. He had connected two seemingly unrelated ideas and created a radically different approach to management that recognized both the eco- nomic and humane benefits of a more c ollegial workplace. Harman went on to accomplish f ar more during his career. In addition to f ounding Harman International, he served as the deputy secretary of commerce under Jimmy Ca r ter. But he always looked back on the inci- dent 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 c ame 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 inter- viewed, 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 assumptions, hone their judgment. And, invariably, they emerged from the crucible stronger and more sure of themselves and their purpose—changed in some fundamental way. L eadership 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 be t ter leaders. As we studied these stories, we f ound that they not only told us how indi- vidual 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. L earning From Difference A crucible is, by definition, a transformative e xperience through which an individual c omes 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 docu- mented involves the experience of prejudice. Being a victim of prejudice is particularly trau- matic because it forces an individual to con- front a distorted picture of him- or herself, and it often unleashes profound feelings of anger, be wilderment, and even 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. C onsider, for example, Liz Altman, now a Motorola vice president, who was transformed by the year she spent at a Sony camcorder fac- tory in rural Japan, where she faced both es- W arren G. Bennis is a Distinguished Pr ofessor of Business Administration and the founding chairman of the L eadership Institute at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. He is also the author of more than 25 books on leadership. Robert J. Thomas is an associate partner and senior fellow with the Accenture Institute for Strategic Change and the author of What Ma- chines Can’t Do (University of California Pr ess, 1994). Bennis and Thomas’s book Geeks and Geezers will be published by Harvard Business School Pr ess this month. They are also at work on an upcoming book, C rucibles for Leaders . Crucibles of Leadership • • • HBR A T L ARGE harvard business review • september 2002 page 4 trangement and sexism. It was, says Altman, “by far, the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” The fo r eign 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 circumstances had warned Alt- man that the only way to win the men’s re spect was to avoid becoming allied with the office la dies. But on her very first morning, when the b ell 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 Alt- man 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 observe the unfamiliar office culture. But it didn’t take her long to notice that some of the men spent the break at their desks reading magazines, and Altman determined that she c ould 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. Be- c ause 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 engineers. The secretary took it upon herself to include Altman in social gatherings, a turn of events that probably wouldn’t have occurred if Alt- man 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. Lo oking back, Altman believes the experi- ence greatly helped her gain a clearer sense of her personal strengths and capabilities, prepar- ing her for other difficult situations. Her ten- ure in Japan taught her to observe closely and to avoid jumping to conclusions based on cul- tural assumptions—invaluable skills in her current p osition at Motorola, where she leads efforts to smooth alliances with other corpo- ra te cultures, including those of Motorola’s different r egional 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 experi- enced the dissonance of cultures:”...even if yo u’ re sitting in the same room, ostensibly agreeing...unless you understand the frame of re fe r ence, you’re probably missing a bunch of what’s going on.” Altman also credits her cruci- ble with building her confidence—she feels that she can cope with just about anything that c omes her way. P eople can feel the stigma of cultural differ- ences 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 an- other 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 addressing anti-Semitism—a tech- nique that quieted the offensive comments of her peers without destroying the relationships she needed to do her job effectively. According to Siebert, at the time it was part of doing busi- ness to have a few drinks at lunch. She remem- b ers, “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: R oses 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 r emarks, and on the card she had written, “En- joyed lunch.” As she recounts, “They got that ca rd in the afternoon, and I never had to take any of that nonsense again. And I never em- The skills re quired to conquer adversity and emerge stronger and more co mmitted than ever are the same ones that make for extraordinary leaders. Crucibles of Leadership • • • HBR A T L ARGE harvard business review • september 2002 page 5 barrassed 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 & Company (now Siebert Fi- nancial Corporation) and has dedicated herself to helping other people avoid some of the diffi- culties 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 edu- ca ting children about financial opportunities and responsibility. We didn’t interview lawyer and presidential adviser Vernon Jordan for this article, but he, too, offers a powerful reminder of how preju- dice can prove transformational rather than debilitating. In V ernon Can Read! A Memoir (Public Affairs, 2001), Jordan describes the vi- cious baiting he was subjected to as a young man. The man who treated him in this offen- sive way was his employer, Robert F. Maddox. Jordan served the racist former mayor of At- lanta at dinner, in a white jacket, with a napkin ov er 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. Subjected to this type of abuse, a lesser man might have allowed Maddox to destroy him. But in his memoir, Jordan gives his own inter- pretation of Maddox’s sadistic heckling, a tale that empowered Jordan instead of embitter- ing him. When he looked at Maddox through the rearview mirror, Jordan did not see a power- ful member of Georgia’s ruling class. He saw a desperate anachronism, a person who lashed out because he knew his time was up. As Jor- dan 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, con- sciously or not, Jordan imbued with redemp- tive meaning. Instead of lashing out or being paralyzed with hatred, Jordan saw the fall of the Old South and imagined 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. Prevailing over Darkness Some crucible experiences illuminate a hid- den and suppressed area of the soul. These are often among the harshest of crucibles, involv- ing, for instance, episodes of illness or vio lence. In the case of Sidney Rittenberg, now 79, the crucible took the form of 16 years of unjust im- prisonment, in solitary confinement, in Com- munist China. In 1949 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 C ommunist Party officials in Moscow, who had wrongly identified him as a CIA agent.) Thrown into jail, confined to a tiny, pitch-dark c ell, Rittenberg did not rail or panic. Instead, within minutes, he remembered a stanza of v erse, 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 po em by Edwin Markham) was the key to Rit t enberg’s survival. “My God,” he thought, “there’s my strategy.” He drew the prison Geeks and Geezers We didn’t set out to learn about cruci- bles. Our research for this article and for our new book, Geeks and Geezers, was ac- tually designed to uncover the ways that era influences a leader’s motivation and aspirations. We interviewed 43 of to- day’s top leaders in business and the public sector, limiting our subjects to p eople born in or before 1925, or in or after 1970. To our delight, we learned a lot about how age and era affect leader- ship style. Our geeks and geezers (the affection- a te 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 similari ties—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 e ven more interesting than we thought it would be. We continued to explore the influences of era—our findings are de- scribed in our book—but at the same time we probed for stories of these cru- cible experiences. These are the stories we share with you here. Crucibles of Leadership • • • HBR A T L ARGE harvard business review • september 2002 page 6 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 c andle so that he could read. He also decided, after his first year, to devote himself to improv- ing his mind—making it more scientific, more pure, and more dedicated to socialism. He be- lieved that if he raised his consciousness, his c aptors would understand him better. And when, over time, the years in the dark began to ta ke an intellectual toll on him and he found his reason faltering, he could still summon f airy 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 pris- oners 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 understand...that happiness...is not a function of your circumstances; it’s a function of your outlook on life.” Rittenberg’s commitment to his ideals con- tinued upon his release. His cell door opened suddenly in 1955, after his first six-year term in prison. He recounts, “Here was a representa- tive of the central government telling me that I had been wronged, that the government was making a formal apology to me...and that they would do everything possible to make restitu- tion.” When his captors offered him money to start a new life in the United States or to travel in Europe, Rittenberg declined, choosing in- stead to stay in China and continue his work f or the Communist Party. And even after a second arrest, which put him into solitary confinement for ten years as Reinvention in the Extreme: The Power of Neoteny All of our interview subjects described their crucibles as opportunities for reinvention— for taking stock of their lives and finding meaning in circumstances many people would see as daunting and potentially inca- pacitating. In the extreme, this capacity for r einvention comes to resemble eternal youth—a kind of vigor, openness, and an en- during capacity for wonder that is the antith- esis of stereotyped old age. We borrowed a term from biology— “neoteny,” which, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, means “retention of juve- nile characteristics in the adults of a spe cies”— to describe this quality, this delight in life- long learning, which every leader we inter- viewed displayed, regardless of age. To a per- son, they were full of energy, curiosity, and c onfidence that the world is a place of won- ders spread before them like an endless feast. Ro be rt 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 appe- tite for learning and self-development, a curi- osity and passion for life. To understand why this quality is so power- ful 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 allowed them to evolve into dogs. Over thousands of years, humans favored wolves that were the friendliest, most ap- proachable, and most curious. Naturally, peo- ple were most drawn to the wolves least likely to attack without warning, that readily locked e yes with them, and that seemed almost human in their eager response to people; the ones, in short, that stayed the most like pup- pies. Like human infants, they have certain physical qualities that elicit a nurturing re- sponse in human adults. When infants see an adult, they often re- spond with a smile that begins small and slowly grows into a radiant grin that makes the adult feel at center of the universe. Re- c ent studies of bonding indicate that nursing and other intimate interactions with an in- f ant cause the mother’s system to be flooded with oxytocin, a calming, feel-good hormone that is a powerful antidote to cortisol, the hormone produced by stress. Oxytocin ap- p ears to be the glue that produces bonding. And the baby’s distinctive look and behaviors c ause 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 b ehaviors allow infants to recruit adults to be their nurturers, essential if such vulnera- ble and incompletely developed creatures are to survive. The power of neoteny to recruit protectors and nurturers was vividly illustrated in the former Soviet Union. Forty years ago, a So- viet 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 sil- ver fox. Only the least aggressive, most ap- proachable 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 t aking advantage of the fact that these neo- tenic animals don’t snap and snarl on the way to their deaths, their human keepers ap- p ear to have been recruited by their newly cute and endearing charges. The keepers 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. Crucibles of Leadership • • • HBR A T L ARGE harvard business review • september 2002 page 7 re t aliation 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 opportunity to question his belief system—in particular, his c ommitment 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 b eing a turncoat, which...was so powerful that it prevented me from even looking at [my as- sumptions]...Even to question was an act of be- trayal. After I got out...the scales fell away from my eyes and I understood that...the basic doc- trine of arriving at democracy through dicta- torship was wrong.” What’s more, Rittenberg emerged from prison certain that absolutely nothing in his professional life could break him and went on to start a company with his wife. Rittenberg A ssociates is a consulting firm dedicated to de- v eloping business ties between the United States and China. Today, Rittenberg is as com- mitted to his ideals—if not to his view of the b est way to get there—as he was 50 years ago, when he was so severely tested. Meeting Great Expectations Fo r tunately, not all crucible experiences are traumatic. In fact, they can involve a positive, if deeply challenging, experience such as having 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 Dicker son, a successful attorney—the first black city prose- cutor in the United States—and editor of a local African-American newspaper. Dickerson influenced Jones at many levels. F or instance, the older man brought Jones b ehind the scenes to witness firsthand the great civil rights struggle of the 1950s, invit- ing him to sit in on conversations with activ- ists like Thurgood Marshall, Walter White, Ro y Wilkins, and Robert C. Weaver. Says Jones, “I was struck by their resolve, their hu- mor...and their determination not to let the s ystem define them. Rather than just feel be a ten down, they turned it around.” The ex- perience no doubt influenced the many im- po rt ant opinions Judge Jones has written in r egard to civil rights. Dickerson was both model and coach. His lessons covered every aspect of Jones’s intellec- tual growth and presentation of self, including schooling in what we now call “emotional in- telligence.” Dickerson set the highest standards f or Jones, especially in the area of communica- tion skills—a facility we’ve found essential to leadership. Dickerson edited Jones’s early at- tempts at writing a sports column with respect- ful 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 e xpectations 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 disap- p oint the man he still calls “Mr. Dickerson.” Dickerson gave Jones the kind of intensive men- toring that was tantamount to grooming him f or a kind of professional and moral success ion— and Jones has indeed become an instrument f or the profound societal change for which Dickerson fought so c ourageously as well. Jones f ound life-changing meaning in the attention Dickerson paid to him—attention fueled by a c onviction that he, too, though only a teen- ager, 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 es- ta te while still in his teens, only to lose it by the time he turned 20 and then go on to start se ve r al 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 f our or five years old when his grandfather ap- proached him and offered to share his business e xpertise. Over the years, Michael Klein’s grandfather taught him to learn from and to c ope with change, and the two spoke by phone f or 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 experiences. Take Jack Coleman, Fortunately, not all crucible experiences are traumatic. In fact, they can involv e a positive, if deeply challenging, experience such as ha v ing a demanding boss or mentor. Crucibles of Leadership • • • HBR A T L ARGE harvard business review • september 2002 page 8 78-year-old former president of Haverford C ol lege 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 f ormer members of the school’s football team were going to make sure the students didn’t succeed. Seemingly out of nowhere, Coleman had the idea to preempt the violence by sug- gesting that the protesting students take down the flag, wash it, and then put it back up—a crucible moment that even now elicits tre- mendous 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 manufacturer, 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 c ope with these difficult situations but also learn from them? We believe that great leaders p ossess four essential skills, and, we were sur- prised to learn, these happen to be the same skills that allow a person to find meaning in what could be a debilitating experience. First is the ability to engage others in shared meaning. C onsider Sidney Harman, who dived into a chaotic work environment to mobilize employ- ees around an entirely new approach to man- agement. Second is a distinctive and compel- ling voice. Look at Jack Coleman’s ability to defuse a potentially violent situation with only his words. Third is a sense of integrity (including a strong set of values). Here, we point again to C oleman, whose values prevailed even during the emotionally charged clash between peace demonstrators and the angry (and strong) f ormer football team members. But by far the most critical skill of the four is what we call “adaptive capacity.” This is, in es- sence, applied creativity—an almost magical ability to transcend adversity, with all its atten- dant stresses, and to emerge stronger than be- fo re . It’s composed of two primary qualities: the ability to grasp context, and hardiness. The ability to grasp context implies an ability to weigh a welter of factors, ranging from how ve ry different groups of people will interpret a gesture to being able to put a situation in pers pective. Without this, leaders are utterly lost, because they cannot connect with their c onstituents. M. Douglas Ivester, who succ eeded Ro be r to Goizueta at Coca-Cola, exhibited a woeful inability to grasp context, lasting just 28 months on the job. For example, he de- moted his highest-ranked African-American employee even as the company was losing a $200 million class-action suit brought by black employees—and this in Atlanta, a city with a p owerful African-American majority. Contrast Ivester with Vernon Jordan. Jordan realized his b oss’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 peo- p le to emerge from devastating circumstances without losing hope. Look at Michael Klein, who experienced 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- P ackard acquired in 1999. C onsider, to o, 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 with- out 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 to learn from it, and to emerge stronger, more engaged, and more committed than ever. These attributes allow leaders to grow from their crucibles, in- stead of being destroyed by them—to find op- po r tunity where others might find only des pair. This is the stuff of true leadership. R eprint R0209B To order, see the next page or call 800-988-0886 or 617-783-7500 or go to www.hbrreprints.org HBR A T L ARGE Crucibles of Leadership To Order F or Harvard Business Review r eprints and subscriptions, call 800-988-0886 or 617-783-7500. Go to www.hbrreprints.org F or customized and quantity orders of Harvard Business Review article reprints, call 617-783-7626, or e-mai [email protected] page 9 Further Reading ARTICLES Level 5 Leadership: The Triumph of Humility and Fierce Resolve by Jim Collins Harvard Business Review January 2001 Product no. R0507M The intense self-reflection and transformation that accompany crucible experiences can nur- ture the seed of what Collins defines as Lev el 5 leadership —the rare ability to boost com- panies to greatness and keep them there. Le v el 5 leaders blend the paradoxical combi- nation of deep personal humility with intense professional will . One of the key characteristics of Level 5 leaders is their ability to deal with the brutal facts of reality—while maintaining absolute faith that they will prevail. A Survival Guide for Leaders by Ronald A. Heifetz and Marty Linsky Harvard Business Review June 2002 Product no. R0206C If you emerge stronger from a crucible experi- ence, you may encounter the darker side of leadership: the inevitable attempts by change-resistant followers to derail you. Change is painful, and some people try to ease the pain by removing change’s agent: you. How to counteract resistance? First, manage y our environment —y our organization and its people. For example, operate both in and above the fray, asking “What’s really going on? Who’s defending the status quo?” And k eep the “heat” high enough to motivate, but low enough to prevent explosions. Second, manage your vulnerabilities . Resist the urge to establish order and control for their o wn sake. And anchor yourself with daily rou- tines that help you recalibrate, as well as confi- dants who support you. BOOK Geeks and Geezers: How Era, Values, and Defining Moments Shape Leaders by Warren G. Bennis and Robert J. Thomas Harvard Business School Press 2002 Product no. 5823 This book expands on the ideas in “Crucibles of Leadership ” article, introducing readers to fo rt y-three leaders who have experienced cru- cibles. In particular, it compares the transfor- mative experiences of two groups: geeks and geezers . Geeks are accomplished leaders be- tw een the ages of 21 and 35; geezers are be- tw een the ages of 70 and 93 and still contrib- uting significantly to professions, industries or society. The authors explore how key events in these individuals’ times—such as World War II or the dot- com Internet explosion—challenged them and opened them to new ways of seeing the world, of leading, and of being successful, healthy human beings. The book’s many stor ies can help you define your o wn best strategies for leading and learning f or a lifetime.