Leadership Can Be Taught. Sharon Daloz Parks
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approaches to leadership, I often note a distinction made between two nineteenth-century British prime ministers. It was observed that when you had dinner with William Gladstone, you left thinking, “That Gladstone is the wittiest, the most intelligent, the most charming person around.” But when you had dinner with Benjamin Disraeli, you left thinking, “I’m the wittiest, the most intelligent, the most charming person around!” Gladstone shone, but Disraeli created an environment in which others could shine. The latter is the more powerful form of leadership, an adventure in which the leader is privileged to find treasure within others and put it to good use. That is the manner of adventure that Ronald Heifetz and Sharon Daloz Parks lead us through in these pages, and teachers, leaders, and organizations can be far richer for it.
—Warren Bennis
University professor and founding chairman of the LeadershipInstitute at the University of Southern California
Acknowledgments
The creation of a book is rarely the work of an individual alone. Especially in a book of this kind, many people have directly and indirectly made essential contributions. First among these are Craig Dykstra and Susan Wisely at the Lilly Endowment who were from the beginning courageous, wise, and supportive colleagues. At the Kennedy School, Peter Zimmerman served as the official administrator for the study project and offered strategic insights; Dutch Leonard, Mark Moore, Jan Schubert, Edith Stokey, and Sue Williamson also informed the work and my understanding of the context it serves. Richard J. Light, Director of the Harvard Assessment Seminars, served as a colleague with whom I could think through the initial phase of the study. In the final stages of preparing the manuscript, the Center for Public Leadership provided several forms of tangible assistance.
I am particularly grateful to Theresa Monroe who was a primary member of Ronald Heifetz’s teaching staff during the initial phase of the study and was the person who first spoke with me about the possibility of my becoming engaged in this work. I am grateful also to Jenny Gelber, who served as the head teaching assistant in the course during two years of the study. Other teaching assistants also informed this work and include:Ann Harbeson, Betsy Hasegawa, Tom Landy, Peter Martynowych, Phyllis Steiner, and Claudia Thompson. For administrative support I am grateful to Scott Webster, Carol Boris, Sheila Blake, Eugenie Moriconi, and Kay Millhon.
There would have been no study, however, apart from the participation of more than sixty students. I promised them anonymity, but each one contributed distinctive elements to the mosaic that has taken form here. I offer special appreciation to those who provided hospitality in their professional settings for the postgraduate portion of the study, and to their colleagues who were willing to be interviewed as I tested the findings.
As much as all of those acknowledged contributed in spirit, insight, and practical support, because this work has an evaluative component, for the study to retain its integrity—it was finally mine alone. I am, therefore, particularly grateful for those who worked with me on my side of the boundary. My primary colleague in this work has been my research associate, Karen Thorkilsen. Karen has been steadfast in her efficient and elegant processing of the enormous amount of interview data that this kind of study generates. Her understanding of the forms of learning described here was invaluable as I worked to interpret the findings to a wider public. More, her editing, which sometimes included contributions from her own talented pen, and her insistence on fidelity to the data as she saw it, as usual provided just the kind of tensive power the evaluative imagination requires. She and I are both grateful for the superior skill that Kate Marrone brings to the transcription of interviews.
A number of colleagues have been especially generous in the development of the full manuscript. First among these are Steve Boyd, Marty Linsky, and Riley Sinder, who at differing points in the process made vital contributions. Others who read the manuscript and who each contributed their own distinctive competence to strengthening this work are Patricia Evans, Tom Ewell, Jerry Millhon, Sherry Nicholson, Tony Robinson, Emily Sander, Jim Shaffer, and Roger Taylor—and also the anonymous readers identified by the Press.
Chapter 8 would not have been possible without the investment of time and commitment on the part of Dean Williams, Win O’Toole, Hugh O’Doherty, Alma Blount, and Al Preble. My respect as well as my gratitude for each of them is immense.
For what I continue to learn about leadership and how to teach it, I am grateful to two particular sets of colleagues: Those with whom I work in Leadership for the New Commons: A Bioregional Leadership Initiative of the Whidbey Institute, especially Larry Daloz, Craig Fleck, Diana Gale, Roger Taylor, and Carol Yamada, along with the many professionals who have participated in the Powers of Leadership seasonal retreats at the Institute; and my faculty colleagues at Seattle University and the participants in the Executive Leadership Program, directed by Marilyn Gist, and in the Pastoral Excellence Program, directed by Marianne LaBarr.
Jeff Kehoe, Senior Editor at Harvard Business School Press, has been exceptional in his artful practice of providing the right mix of challenge and support that an author needs. Marcy Barnes-Henrie and Julia Ely and their colleagues in production and marketing have been professional and gracious. For the final title of the book we are all indebted to Sousan Abidian.
For several forms of professional and personal support, I am indebted to Kim Hanson, Gray Kochhar-Lindgren, Dan Lahey, Sam Magill, Carolyn North, Eloys Mills Parks, Stephanie Ryan, Wes and Joyce Veatch, Cathy Whitmire, and Sheryl Whitney. It has been said that marriage is one long conversation, and I am grateful that my husband, Larry Parks Daloz, welcomed my engagement in this work as a part of the conversation we share—both personal and professional. He endured my absorption in the project at critical times, and he served as both editor and “techie” all along the way.
Finally, I am grateful to Ronald Heifetz for his steadfast respect and support in this enterprise. It cannot be easy to have an evaluator observe every aspect of your teaching for five years and more—sometimes appearing unannounced. I want to pay particular respect to the way in which he so consistently honored the boundary that I had to maintain in carrying out the commitments of this work, while he served also as a gracious host.
—Sharon Daloz Parks
Whidbey Island, Washington
CHAPTER ONE
Leadership for a Changing World
A Call to Adaptive Work
ON A COLD, rainy December afternoon, the last session of a course in leadership had just ended. Seated beside me, a bright, thoughtful young man was intently filling out his course evaluation form. Fourteen weeks earlier, I had observed him on the first day of class and suspected he might not take the course. The course begins in an unconventional manner, and he appeared well prepared to exercise other options. Yet now at the close of the term, here he was.
After he finished the evaluation, I told him I had noticed his skepticism on the opening day, and I wondered now how he felt about the course at the end. He responded immediately that the course had been very valuable. Then I asked, “Do you remember why you decided to stay?” After a long pause, he replied, “That would be hard to say—leadership is a word that holds a lot of hungers.”
His response has remained with me because his understated eloquence rang true. We live in a time when the hungers for leadership are strong and deep. As our world becomes more complex, diverse, and morally ambiguous, leadership trainings and programs abound and executive coaching has appeared on the scene. Yet there remains a gnawing awareness that our prevailing myths and many of our assumed practices of leadership match neither the central perils nor the finest aspirations spawned by the forces of dramatic change—affecting every society, institution, corporation, agency, organization, community, neighborhood, task force, or project team.
At least five key hungers conspire to create what is increasingly recognized as a growing crisis in leadership. Two of these are ancient, and three of them arise from the particular conditions of this moment in history: (1) Within every person there is a hunger to exercise some sense of personal agency—to have an effect, to contribute, to make a positive difference, to influence, help, build—and in this sense to lead. (2) Throughout human history, within every social group