momentum complete leadership foreword
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In my travels as a lecturer and consultant on leadership, I find the
most common question I’m asked is, ‘Can leadership be learned?’
I’ve spent half a decade looking into that very question, as a result of
the data that showed emotional intelligence to be crucial in what sets
apart the best leaders from the mediocre. I’ve done this work with
my colleague, Richard Boyatzis, professor of organizational
behaviour at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case
Western Reserve University.
Both Boyatzis and myself date our interest in the question to our
graduate school days at Harvard University, studying with the late
Professor David McClelland. He, more than anyone, was responsible
for taking the focus in evaluating the active ingredients of leadership
away from the matters of background and pedigree, academic
achievement and performance on intellectual tests. Instead, he
proposed that organizations identify the set of capabilities that
distinguish outstanding leaders from those who are just average –
and hire, promote, and develop people for those capabilities.
Using a massive amount of such data from organizations of all kinds
worldwide, Boyatzis and I have been able to identify both the
specific set of abilities that are the active ingredients in great
leadership, and the principles of learning that must be applied in
order for learning to bring lasting improvement to a leader’s
repertoire. Those are the principles we set forth in our book The New
Leaders, co-authored with Annie McKee.
In doing this work, we have benefited greatly from the co-operation
of colleagues at the Hay Group, who themselves have been tilling
foreword
these same fields for years, many of them working directly with
David McClelland himself. Now I’m delighted that Susan Bloch,
formerly of the Hay Group, has teamed up with Phil Whiteley to
write this practical application of the best principles for cultivating
new strengths in the competencies that make for great leadership.
My hope is that this will make such learning widely available, and
that many people – leaders and those who follow alike – will benefit.
Daniel Goleman
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