How To Lead

I only know HBS in passing as I pass it by from Coolidge Corner to Harvard Square. So when my father presented me a book on leadership from HBR, it sat on the shelf with the other career improvement titles that I ignored during grad school. But my thesis was written four years ago and just last month, my spouse started his leadership journey. Whether it's "spouse see, spouse does" or that I want to explore his interests as a show of love, I have finally opened the book myself.

Some ideas are obvious (emotional intelligence is key to a good leader), some ideas are not (leadership is different from management), and some are questionable (top leaders display the two key qualities of humility and willpower). But what is striking are the flimsy justifications for the theories. You are using the wrong part of the brain. You need to mimic the attitude of babies to energize your employees. (I honestly wish I were kidding.) You need to emulate the leaders that have been selected on the dependent variable. It does not escape me that business theory may not be a science, so I wonder what does science say about leadership.

Surprise, surprise. There is a book on the science of leadership. Surprise, surprise. It is devastatingly dry. What's good is the consensus that leadership can be taught. What's bad is the claim that there is a genetic component to leadership. But the takeaway is that great leaders are not just made but work in concert with followers to take advantage of an opportunity. Leaders alone are not enough; it's the complex dynamic relationship among leaders, followers, and opportunity that create change.

In this year of 2025, where everyone is looking either to lead or be lead, I think that not everyone needs to be a leader but everyone needs to prepare in case that need arises. Both books suggest that a culture of leadership needs to be cultivated, that leadership needs to be practiced, that anyone can become a leader if they want to be. I don't think I'm a leader (yet) but I think I know how to spot a good one, and what better way to learn how to lead but from people who are good at it already.

But what about you? Since I'm not a leader, I don't know what to say. But I know what the books say and that a good leader is authentic, vulnerable, caring, and visionary. Leaders motivate people to perform tasks but also to lead. Perhaps good leaders also produce other good leaders, and if so, it's just the matter of finding the right one.