Nancy Koehn who is a historian at the Harvard Business School has written a new book challenging the notions on leadership through the real-life examples of five stalwarts. The generally accepted notion that leaders are born has been dismissed in this book by stating that instead they need to be forged. The first two examples taken are US President during the Civil War- Abraham Lincoln- and escaped slave turned abolitionist Frederick Douglass. The third one is Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was a clergyman during the height of Nazi Germany, but defied them by turning into a double agent. Rachel Carson is renowned for literally starting off the modern environmental protection movement while the last name of this list – Ernest Schackleton- is was a polar explorer who got shipwrecked but managed to bring back his entire crew unharmed while surviving on bare minimum. None of these leaders had access to formal management training, yet circumstances and exposure brought out the best of their inner abilities.

Source:http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/forged-in-crisis/

Uploaded Date:24 November 2017