Leadership Without Easy Answers

361 Pages·1998·18.66 MB·English

by  Ronald Heifetz

Leadership Without
Easy Answers

Leadership Without
Easy Answers
Ronald A. Heifetz
The Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
Copyright© 1994bythe Presidentand FellowsofHarvard College
All rights reserved
Printed inthe UnitedStatesofAmerica
LibraryofCongress Catalogingin Publication Data
Heifetz, RonaldA. (RonaldAbadian), 1951
Leadershipwithouteasyanswers/Ronald A. Heifetz.
p. em.
Includes bibliographicalreferences (p. )and index.
ISBN 0-674-51858-6 (acid-free paper)
1. Leadership. I. Title.
HM141.H385 1994
303.3'4-dc20
94-15184
CIP
To Sousan

Contents
Foreword by Richard E. Neustadt ix
Introduction 1
Part I Setting the Frame 11
1 Values in Leadership 13
2 To Lead or Mislead? 28
3 The Roots of Authority 49
Part II Leading With Authority 67
4 Mobilizing Adaptive Work 69
5 Applying Power 101
6 On a Razor's Edge 125
7 Falling Off the Edge 150
Part III Leading Without Authority 181
8 Creative Deviance on the Frontline 183
9 Modulating the Provocation 207
Part IV Staying Alive 233
10 Assassination 235
11 The Personal Challenge 250
Notes 279
Acknowledgments 339
Index 343

Foreword
Richard E. Neustadt
This book is the product of teaching.
TheKennedySchoolofGovernmentatHarvardUniversityteaches
students at four levels: undergraduates in voluntary, noncredit study
groups; recent graduates in two-year Masters programs; midcareer
students, on average ten years older, in one-year Masters programs;
and senior officials, civil as well as military, in a range of short
courses called "executive programs." Much of what we teach is
adapted from traditional disciplines thought to be particularly rele
vant for public policy and its analysis, mainly from economics,
political science, political philosophy, and sociology.
Some courses, however, are framed not by disciplinary concepts
but rather by the questions our experienced students draw urgently
from theirownworkinpubliclife. "ExercisingLeadership," acourse
offered in various versions at all graduate levels ofour student body,
attempts to give students insight on, and useful tools for working in,
a range of roles, unofficial and official, where leading others can
become essential to effective performance. Some ofour students seek
such roles in elective politics, some in the military, some in law or
medicine, more in civilian bureaucracies, public, nonprofit and pri
vate-but all will have the lead role thrust at them, perforce, as task
or opportunity, through the group memberships that mark their
professional and personal lives. Knowing this from experience, our
more mature students press us for something they can learn about
leadership-and take with them back to work.
But what? A decade ago we asked Dr. Heifetz, a young psychia
trist, as well as a skilled musician, who had also studied with us and