Leaders - Publications - Faculty & Research

21 Sep 2015
Book

What It Takes to Learn to Be a Leader

Research Summary

Changing the World: Life Choices of Influential Leaders

This project studies the life choices made by a variety of people who have left a lasting legacy. Using biographical data, we are examining the choices that high-impact individuals faced in their lives and the paths they chose to follow. The leaders we study come... View Details

Keywords: Leadership Style; Personal Characteristics; Work-life Balance; Entrepreneurship; Business Startups; Success

05 Nov 2024
Research & Ideas

AI Can Help Leaders Communicate, But Can't Make Employees Listen

If a chatbot can Slack convincingly in the boss’s voice, will employees follow orders once they realize the CEO is actually a machine? A novel two-part study finds that an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot trained to write like a technology company’s CEO responded... View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand; Information Technology; Technology

09 Jul 2014
Research & Ideas

How Business Leaders Can Strengthen American Schools

Business has long recognized the connection between an effective school system and a qualified workforce—by some estimates, the private sector invests $4 billion annually in efforts intended to improve public education. So why isn't that investment paying off?... View Details

Keywords: by Julia Hanna; Education

2012
Book

Harder Than I Thought: Adventures of a Twenty-First Century Leader

By: Robert D. Austin, Richard L. Nolan and Shannon O'Donnell

Being a great leader today is much harder than you think—meet Jim Barton. He's a newly minted CEO, rising leader of a firm in transition, and manager of massive complexity—thanks to our incredibly networked and increasingly unpredictable world of business. What if you... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Complexity; Crisis Management; Problems and Challenges; Volatility

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21 Sep 2017
Cold Call Podcast

State Street’s SHE: Investing in Women Leaders

Keywords: Re: Vikram Gandhi; Financial Services

May 10, 2010
Article

Bono at 50: The Leader We Need

By: Nancy F. Koehn

Keywords: Leadership; Arts

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05 Jul 2023
HBS Case

What Kind of Leader Are You? How Three Action Orientations Can Help You Meet the Moment

Organizations rarely reinvent themselves in a perfectly straight line. More often than not, reinvention is like riding a roller-coaster, with the highest of highs and lowest of lows. This is true even at the best organizations, despite View Details

Keywords: by Ben Rand

September 2021
Case

Posse Foundation: Developing Strong Leaders from Diverse Backgrounds

By: John J-H Kim, Robin Mendelson and Julia Kelley

Founded in 1989, Posse Foundation was a nonprofit organization with a mission of developing future leaders who reflected the U.S.’s rich diversity. The organization ran a selective, localized admissions process in 10 U.S. cities to identify outstanding students with... View Details

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2022
Book

Productive Tensions: How Every Leader Can Tackle Innovation's Toughest Trade-Offs

By: Chris Bingham and Rory McDonald

Why is leading innovation in nascent business environments so distressingly hit-or-miss? More than 90% of high-potential ventures don’t reach their projected targets. Surveys show that 80% of executives consider innovation crucial to their growth strategy, but only 6%... View Details

Keywords: Growth and Development Strategy; Innovation and Management; Organizational Culture; Leadership Style; Decision Making

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19 Apr 2022
Cold Call Podcast

What Role Do Individual Leaders Play in Corporate Governance?

Keywords: Re: Aiyesha Dey

2004
Chapter

Claiming Authority: Negotiating Challenges for Women Leaders

By: Hannah R. Bowles and Kathleen L. McGinn

Keywords: Leadership; Negotiation Participants; Problems and Challenges; Gender; Power and Influence

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20 Sep 2017
Research & Ideas

The Three Types of Leaders Who Create Radical Change

changes that diverge from taken-for-granted norms. “Although history remembers some individual actors as highly influential, single leaders rarely change the course of society on their own.” The Agitator stirs the pot by articulating and... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

February 2022
Article

How Global Leaders Gain Power Through Downward Deference and Reduction of Social Distance

By: Tsedal Neeley and Sebastian Reiche

We theorize about how people with positional power enact downward deference—a practice of lowering oneself to be equal to that of lower power workers—based on a study of 115 top global leaders at a large U.S. company. These leaders were charged with advancing... View Details

Keywords: Leadership; Leadership Style; Global Range; Relationships; Rank and Position; Power and Influence; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues

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June 1982 (Revised August 1994)
Case

Case of the Dethroned Section Leader (A)

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March 22, 2012
Article

Global Team Leaders Must Deliberately Create 'Moments'

By: Tsedal Neeley

Global teams face the challenge of having to operate with limited face-to-face contact and across vast distances, time zones, language backgrounds, and contexts, as well as cultural differences. In turn, these differences generate disruptions to team cohesion and top... View Details

Keywords: Global Range; Groups and Teams; Management Practices and Processes

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Article

As the World Shifts, So Should Leaders

By: Nitin Nohria

Two decades ago, extensive research led Nohria, the former dean of Harvard Business School, to conclude that the hallmark of great leadership is the ability to adapt to the times. Today, he says, we're in a period of significant change, thanks to global events,... View Details

Keywords: Adaptability; Leadership; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Adaptation

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May 2016
Article

Transformation of Health Care—Perspectives of Opinion Leaders

By: Joanne Disch, Thomas W. Feeley, Diana J. Mason, Richard L. Schilsky, Ellen L. Stovall and Shelley Fuld Nasso

"What Health System Transformations Do You Believe Are Necessary for the Future of Health Care?" We need to transform to a true value-based health care delivery system. That means organizing care around medical conditions, not simply around hospitals and doctors. We... View Details

Keywords: Perspective; Health Disorders; Performance Improvement; Health Care and Treatment; Transformation; Health Industry

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