Leaders - Publications - Faculty & Research

May 2006
Article

Are Leaders Portable?

By: Boris Groysberg, Andrew N. McLean and Nitin Nohria

January 2000 (Revised June 2001)
Background Note

Provides guidelines for how to successfully enter a new senior management position. Identifies key traps into which new leaders fall and provides a framework for organizing to succeed in the first few months on the job. View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Management Teams

Citation

Educators

Purchase

October 19, 2020
Article

Today's Leaders Need Vulnerability, Not Bravado

By: Amy C. Edmondson and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic

Few myths are as pervasive as the notion that leaders ought to appear tough and confident. Or at least, that was the case prior to the current pandemic, which has exposed the many weaknesses of forceful, dominant leaders and highlighted the superiority of those who... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Leadership Style

Citation

Find at Harvard

Register to Read

06 Jun 2011
Research & Ideas

Why Leaders Lose Their Way

In recent months several high-level leaders have mysteriously lost their way. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former head of the International Monetary Fund and a leading French politician, was arraigned on charges of sexual assault. Before that... View Details

Keywords: by Bill George

06 Jul 2016
Research & Ideas

The Truth About Authentic Leaders

contrarian critiques, which ultimately are healthy in clarifying our understanding. In Leadership BS, Stanford’s Jeff Pfeffer says, “the last thing a leader needs to be at crucial moments is authentic.” Insead’s Herminia Ibarra adds, “We... View Details

Keywords: by Bill George

Research Summary

Growing as a Purposeful Leader

By: Leonard A. Schlesinger

Leaders today have to lead in the context of extraordinary changes and challenges. The demands of today's stakeholders have risen significantly, and what is expected of senior leaders is quickly evolving in terms of their mission (more than profit),... View Details

October 2013
Column

How Should Your Leaders Behave?

By: Kevin Sharer

The article discusses the value of effective leadership and an examination of the ways in which a corporate leader should behave as of October 2013, focusing on role models in business and the behavioral traits of chief executive officers (CEOs). Diversity in business... View Details

Keywords: Leadership Style

Citation

Read Now

April 2011
Article

Why Leaders Don't Learn from Success

By: Francesca Gino and Gary P. Pisano

We argue that for a variety of psychological reasons, it is often much harder for leaders and organizations to learn from success than to learn from failure. Success creates three kinds of traps that often impede deep learning. The first is attribution error or the... View Details

Keywords: Learning; Innovation and Management; Leadership; Failure; Success; Performance Evaluation; Prejudice and Bias

Citation

Find at Harvard

13 Aug 2008
Research & Ideas

The Inner Life of Leaders

did you draw on your background in psychoanalysis to approach contemporary characters and issues in leadership? Abraham Zaleznik: When I wrote my first book on the job of the foreman (1950), an observation and an idea took hold: Leaders... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

07 Apr 2003
Research & Ideas

How the U.S. Army Develops Leaders

leader development in the Army. We saw professional identity as having the same type of conceptual promise at the individual level as organizational culture has at the unit level. Q: The Army has a "Be, Know, and Do" framework... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

12 Apr 2004
Research & Ideas

What Great American Leaders Teach Us

Are there certain characteristics that all leaders possess? Could Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton be equally successful today running another company? Harvard Business School's Leadership Initiative is attempting to answer these and other... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

17 Jan 2020
In Practice

6 Traits That Set Top Business Leaders Apart

With CEO turnover climbing, many business leaders are trying to hone skills that will keep them at the helm longer. We asked professors from Harvard Business School’s General Management Unit what qualities distinguish extraordinary View Details

Keywords: by Danielle Kost

04 Sep 2012
Research & Ideas

Book Excerpt: Indispensable: When Leaders Really Matter

In his new book, Indispensable: When Leaders Really Matter, Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Gautam Mukunda addresses the question of whether leaders create history or are created by it. In this... View Details

April 29, 1985
Article

Attacking an Industry Leader

By: M. E. Porter

Keywords: Leadership; Supply and Industry

Citation

Find at Harvard

22 Jul 2019
Book

How to Be a Digital Platform Leader

All of the most valuable firms in the world today are platforms, starting with Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon. But platforms do not evolve in predictable ways, and there is a lot that managers and entrepreneurs can learn about past, present, and future platform... View Details

Keywords: by Martha Lagace

Teaching Interest

Risk Management for Corporate Leaders

By: Robert Simons

As companies adapt to the aftershocks of the global recession, senior executives and boards are discovering that risk management has never been more important. The financial crisis revealed that risk management structures break down just when... View Details