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HBR AT LARGE Crucibles of Leadership by Warren G. Bennis and Robert). Thomas of leadership, we are fascinated with the notion of what makes a leader. W h y is it that certain people seem to naturally inspire confidence, loyalty, and hard work, wh i le others (who may have just as much vision and smarts) stumble, again and again' I t's a timeless question, and there's no simple answer. But we have come to believe it has something to do with the different ways that people deal with adversity. indeed, our recent research has led us to conclude that one of the most reliable indicators and predictors of true leadership is an individual's ability to find meaning in negative events and to learn from even the most trying circumstances. Put another way, the skills required to conquer adversity and emerge stronger and more committed than ever are the same ones that make for extraordinary leaders. Take Sidney Harman.Thirty-four years ago, the then-48-year-old businessman was holdi ng down two executive positions. He was the chief executive of Harman Kardon (now Harman I nternational),the audio components company he had cofounded, and he was serving as president of Friends World College, AS LIFELONG STUDENTS Everyone is tested by life, but only a few extract strength and wisdom from their most trying experiences. They're the ones we call leaders. now Friends World Program, an experimental Quaker school on Long Island whose essentia l philosoph y is that students, not their teachers, are responsible for their education. Juggling the two jobs, Harman was living what he calls a "bifurcated life; hanging clothes c in his car and eating lunch as he drove between Harman Kardon offices and plants and the Friends World ca m pus. One day while at the college, he was told his company's factory in Bolivar, Tennessee, was having a crisis. He immediately rushed to the Bolivar factory, a facility that was, as Harman now recalls,"raw, ugly,and,in many ways, demeaning!'The problem, he found, had erupted in the polish and buff department, where a crew of a dozen workers, mostly African-Americans, did the dull, hard work of polishing mirrors and other parts, often under unhealthy conditions.The men on the night shift were supposed to get a coffee break at 10 PM. When the buzzer that announced the workers' break went on the fritz, management arbitrarily decided to postpone the break for ten minutes, when another buzzer was sched uled to sound. But one worker,"an old black man with an almost biblical name, Noah B.Cross," 39 SCPTCMBER 2002 HBR AT LARGE • Crucibles of Leadership had "an epipha ny;•as Harman describes it."He said, litera lly, to his fellow workers, 'I don't work for no buzzer. The buzzer works for me.It's my job to tell me when it's ten o'clock. I got me a watch. I 'm not waiting another ten minutes. I 'm going on my coffee break:And all 12 guys took their coffee break, and, of cou rse, all hell broke loose'' The worker's principled rebellion-his refusal to be cowed by management's senseless rule-was, in turn,a revelation to Harman:"The technology is there to serve the men, not the reverse;• he remembers realizing."I suddenly had this awakening that everything I was doing at the college had appropriate applications in business!'In the ensuing years, Harman revamped the factory and its workings, turning it into a kind of campus-offering classeson the premises, including piano lessons, a nd encouraging the workers to take most of the responsibility for running their workplace. Further, he created an environment where dissent was not only tolerated but also encouraged. The plant's lively independent newspaper,the Bolivar Mirror, gave workers a creative and emotional outlet-and they enthusiastically skewered Harman in its pages. Harman had, unexpectedly, become a pioneer of participative management, a movement that continues to influence the shape of workplaces around the world.The concept wasn't a grand idea conceived in the CEO's office and imposed on the plant, Harman says. It grew organically out ofhisgoingdown to Boliva r to, in his words,"put out this fire'' Ilarman's transformation was,above all, a creative one. lie had connected two seemingly unrelated ideas and created a radically different approach to management that recognized both the economic and humane benefits of a more collegial workplace. H arman went on to accomplish far more during his career. In addition to founding Harman International, he served as the deputy secretary of commerce under Jimmy Carter. But he always looked back on the incident in Bolivar as the formative event in his professional life, the moment he came into his own as a leader. The details of Harman's story are unique, but their significance is not. In interviewing more than 40 top leaders in business and the public sector over the past three years, we were surprised to find that all of them- young and old-were able to point to intense,often traumatic, always unplanned experiences that had transformed them and had become the sources of their distinctive leadersh ip abilities. of self-doubt. But whatever the crucible's nature, the people we spoke with were able, like Harman, to create a narrative around it, a story of how they were challenged, met the challenge, and became better leaders. As we studied these stories, we found that they not only told us how individual leaders are shaped but also pointed tosome characteristics that see m common to all leaders-characteristics that were formed, or at least exposed, in the crucible. Learning from Difference A crucible is, by definition, a transformative experience through which an individual comes to a new or an altered sense of identity. It is perhaps not surprising then that one of the most common types of crucibles we documented The skills required to conquer adversity and emerge stronger and more committed than ever are the same ones that make for extraordinary leaders. We came to call the experiences that shape leaders "crucibles;after the vessels medieval alchemists used in their attempts to turn base metals into gold. For the leaders we interviewed, the crucible experience was a trial and a test, a point of deep self-reflection that forced them to question who they were and what mattered to them. It required them to examine their values, question their assumptions, hone their judgment. And, invariably, they eme rged from the crucible stronger and more sure of themselves and their purpose-changed in some fundamental way. Leadership crucibles can take many forms.Some are violent, life-threatening events.Others are more prosaic episodes involves the experience of prejudice. Being a victim of prejudice is particularly traumatic because it forces an individual to confront a distorted picture of him-or herself, and it often unleashes profound feelings of anger, bewilderment, and even withdrawal. For all its trauma, however, the experience of prejudice is for some a clarifying event. Through it, they gain a clearer vision of who they are, the role they play, and their place in the world. Consider, for example, Liz Altman, now a Motorola vice president, who was transformed by the year she spent at a Sony camcorder factory in rural Japan, where she faced both estrangement and sexism. It was, says Altman, "by far, the hardest thing I've ever done." The foreign culture- particularly its emphasis on groups over individuals-was both a shock and a challenge to a young American woman. It wasn't just that she felt lonely in an alien world.She had to face the daunting prospect of carvi ng out a place for herself as the only woman engineer in a plant, and nation, where IIARVARO BUSINESS REVIEW Warren G. Bennis is a Distinguished Professor of Business Administration and the fiJUndmg chamnan of the Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. He is also the author of more than 25 books on leadership. Robert f. Thomas ts an associate partner and senior fellow with the Accenture Institute for Strategic Change and the author of What Machines Can't Do (University of California Press,1994). Benms and Thomas's book Geeks and Geezers will be published by Harvard Business School Press this month.They are also at work on an upcoming book, Crucibles for Leaders. 40 Crucibles of Leadership • HBR AT LARGE women usually serve as low-level assistants and clerks known as"office ladies!' Another woman who had come to Japan under simi lar circumstances had warned Altman that the only way to win the men's respect was to avoid becoming allied with the office ladies. But on her very first morning, when the bell rang for a coffee break, the men headed in one direction and the women in another and the women saved her a place at their table, while the men ignored her. Instinct told Altman to ignore the warning rather than insult the women by rebuffing their invitation. Over the next few days, she continued to join the women during breaks, SEI'1LM 8CR 2002 a choice that gave her a comfortable haven from which to observe the unfamiliar office culture. But it didn't take her long to notice that some of the men spent the break at their desks reading magazines, and Altman determined that she could do the same on occasion. Finally, after paying close attention to the conversations around her, she learned that several of the men were interested in mountain biking. Because Altman wanted to buy a mountain bike,she approached them for advice. Thus, over time, she established herself as something of a free agent, sometimes sitting with the women and other times engaging with the men. And as it happened, one of the women she'd sat with on her very first day, the department secretary, was married to one of the engineers. The secretary took it upon herself to include Altman in social gatherings, a tum of events that probably wouldn't have occurred if Altman had alienated her female coworkers on that first day. "Had I just gone to try to break in with [the men] and not had her as an ally, it would never have happened:'she says. Looking back, Altman believes the experience greatly helped her gain a clearer sense of her personal strengths and capabilities, preparing her for other difficult situations. Her tenure in Japan taught her to observe closely and to avoid jumping to conclusions based on cultural assumptionsinvaluable skills in her current position at Motorola, where she leads efforts to smooth alliances with other corporate cultures, including those of Motorola's different regional operations. Altman has come to believe that she wouldn't have been as able to do the Motorola job if she hadn't lived in a foreign country and experienced the dissonance of cultures: "...even if you're sitting in the same room, ostensibly agreeing...unless you understand the frame of reference, you're probably missing a bunch of what's going on'' Altman also credits her crucible with building her confidence -she feels that she can cope with just about anything that comes her way. People can feel the stigma of cultural differences much closer to home, as well. Muriel ("Mickie") Siebert, the first woman to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, found her crucible on the Wall Street of the 1950s and 1960s, an arena so sexist that she couldn't get a job as a stockbroker until she took her first name off her resume and substituted a genderless initial. Other than the secretaries and the occasional analyst, women were few and far between. 41 HBR AT LARGE • Crucibles of Leadership That she was jewish was another strike cause she was unable to get credit for against her at a time, she points out, the business she was bringing in at any when most of big business was"not nice" of the large Wall Street firms that she to either women or jews. But Siebert bought a seat on the New York Stock Exwasn't broken or defeated. Instead, she change and started working for herself. In subsequent years, she went on to emerged stronger, more focused, and more determined to change the status found Muriel Siebert & Company (now Siebert Financial Corporation) and has quo that excluded her. When we interviewed Siebert, she dedicated herself to helping other peodescribed her way of addressing anti- ple avoid some of the difficu lties she Semitism- a technique that quieted faced as a young professional. A promit he offensive comments of her peers nent advocate for women in business and without destroying the relationships a leader in developing financial products she needed to do her job effectively. directed at women, she's also devoted According to Siebert, at the time it was to educating children about financial part of doing business to have a few opportunities and responsibility. drinks at lunch. She remembers, "Give We didn't interview lawyer and pressomebody a couple of drinks, and they idential adviser Vernon Jordan for this would talk about the jews." She had a article, but he, too, offers a powerful greeting card she used for those occa- reminder of how prejudice can prove transformational rather than debilitatsions that went like this: Roses are reddish, ing. In Vernon Can Read.' A Memoir (Public Affairs, 2001), Jordan describes the Violets are bluish, I n case you don't know, vicious baiting he was subjected to as 1 am jewish. a young man.The man who treated him Siebert would have the card hand- in this offensive way was his employer, delivered to the person who had made Robert F. Maddox. Jordan served t he the anti-Semitic remarks, and on the racist former mayor of Atlanta at dinner, card she had written, "Enjoyed lunch:' in a white jacket, with a napkin over his As she recounts,"They got that card in arm. He also functioned as Maddox's the afternoon, and I never had to take chauffeur. Whenever Maddox could, any of that nonsense again.And I never he would derisivel y announce,"Vemon embarrassed anyone, either:• ft was becan read!" as if the literacy of a young African-American were a source of wonderment Subjected to this type of abuse, a lesser man might have allowed Maddox to destroy him. But in his memoir, jordan gives his own interpretation of Maddox's sadistic heckling, a tale that empowered jordan instead of embittering him. When he looked at Maddox through the rearview mirror, jordan did not see a powerful member of Georgia's ruling class. He saw a desperate anachronism, a person who lashed out because he knew his time was up. As Jordan writes about Maddox,"His halfmocking, half-serious comments about my education were the death rattle of his culture. When he saw that I was... crafting a life for myself that wou ld make me a man in...ways he thought of as being a man, he was deeply unnerved:' Maddox's cruelty was the crucible that, consciously or not, jordan imbued with redemptive mean i ng. Instead of lashing out or being paralyzed with hatred,Jordan saw the fall of the Old South and imagined his own future freed of the historical shacklesof racism. His ability to organize meaning around a potential crisis turned it into the crucible around which his leadership was forged. Prevailing over Darkness Some crucible experiences illuminate a hidden and suppressed area of the soul. These are often among the harshest of crucibles, involving, for instance, episodes of illness or violence. In the case of Sidney Rittenberg, now 79, the crucible took the form of16 years of unjust imprisonment, in solitary confinement, in Communist China. In 1949 Rittenberg was initially jailed, without explanation, by former friends in Chairman Mao Zedong's government and spent his first year in total darkness when he wasn't being interrogated. (Rittenberg later learned that his arrest came at the behest of Communist Party officials in Moscow, who had wrongly identified him as a CIA agent) Thrown into jail, confined to a tiny, pitch-dark cell, Rittenberg did not rail or panic. I nstead, within minutes, he remembered HARVARD BUSINI:SS REVIEW Geeks and Geezers We didn't set out to learn about crucibles. Our research for this article and for our new book, Ceeks and Geezers, was actually designed to uncover the ways that era influences a leader's motivation and aspirations. We interviewed 43 oftoday's top leaders in business and the public sector, limiting our subjects to people born in or before 1925, or in or after 1970. To our del1ght, we learned a lot about how age and era affect leadership style. Our geeks and geezers (the affectionate shorthand we eventually used to descnbe the two groups) had very different ideas about paying your dues, work-life balance, the role of heroes, and more. But they also shared some strikmg s1milarit1es -among them a love of learning and strong sense of values. Most intriguing, though, both our geeks and our geezers told us again and again how certain experiences inspired them, shaped them, and, mdeed, taught them to lead. And so, as the best research often does, our work turned out to be even more mteresting than we thought it would be. We continued to explore the influences of era-our findings are described in our book- but at the same time we probed for stories of these crucible experiences. These are the stories we share with you here. 42 HBR AT LARGE • Crucibles of Leadership a stanza of verse, four lines recited to him when he was a small child: They drew a circle that shut me out, Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But love and I had the wit to win, We drew a circle that took them in! That bit of verse (adapted from "Outwitted;' a poem by Edwin Markham) was the key to Rittenberg's survivaL"My God:' he thought,"there's my strategy:' He drew the prison guards into his circle,developing relationships that would help him adapt to his confinement. Fluent in Chinese, he persuaded the guards to deliver him books and, eventually, provide a candle so that he could read. He also decided, after his first year, to devote himself to improving his mindmaking it more scientific, more pure, and more dedicated to socialism.He believed that if he raised hisconsciousness, his captors would understand him better. And when, over time, the years in the dark began to take an intellectual toll on him and he found his reason faltering, he could still summon fairy tales and childhood stories such as The Little Engine That Could and take comfort from their simple messages. By contrast, many of Rittenberg's fellow prisoners either lashed out in anger or withdrew."They tended to go up the waii....They couldn't make it. And I think the reason was that they didn't understand...that happiness...is not a function of your circumstances; it's a function of your outlook on life." Rittenberg's commitment to his ideals continued upon his release. His cell door opened suddenly in1955, after his first six-year term in prison. He recounts, "Here was a representative of the central government telling me that I had been wronged, that the government was making a formal apology to me...and that they would do everything possible to make restitution:'When his captors offered him money to start a new life in the United States or to travel in Europe, Rittenberg declined, choosing instead to stay in China and continue his work for the Communist Party. And even after a second arrest, which put him into solitary confinement for ten years as retaliation for his support 44 of open democracy during the Cultural Revolution, Rittenberg did not allow his spirit to be broken. Instead, he used his time in prison as an opportunity to question his belief system-in particular, his commitment to Marxism and Chairman Mao."In that sense, prison emancipated me:' he says. Rittenberg studied, read, wrote, and thought, and he learned something about himself in the process:"I realized I had this great fear of being a turncoat, which... was so powerful that it prevented me from even looking at [my assumptions]....Even to question was Fortunately,not all crucible experiences are traumatic. In fact,they can involve a positive, if deeply cha llenging, experience such as having a demanding boss or mentor. an act of betrayal. After I got out...the scales fell away from my eyes and l understood that...the basic doctrine of arriving at democracy through d.ictatorship was wrong:' What's more, Rittenberg emerged from prison certain that absol utely nothing in his professional life could break him and went on to start a company with his wife. Rittenberg Associates is a consulting firm dedicated to developing business ties between the United States and China.Today, Rittenberg is as committed to his ideals-if not to his view of the best way to get thereas he was so years ago, when he was so severely tested. Meeting Great Expectations Fortunately, not all crucible experiences are traumatic. In fact, they can involve a positive, if deeply challenging, experience such as having a demanding boss or mentor.Judge Nathaniel R. jones of the U.S.Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, for instance, attributes much of his success to his interaction with a splendid mentor. That mentor was ). Maynard Dickerson, a successful attorney - the first black city prosecutor in the United States-and editor of a local African-American newspaper. Dickerson influenced Jones at many levels. For instance, the older man brought Jones behind the scenes to witness firsthand the great civil rights struggle of the 1950s, inviting him to sit in on conversations with activists like Thurgood Marshall, Walter White, Roy Wilkins, and Robert C. Weaver. Says jones, "l was struck by their resolve, their humor...and their determination not to let the system define them. Rather than just feel beaten down, they turned it around!'The experience no doubt influenced the many important opinions Judge }ones has written in regard to civil rights. Dickerson was both model and coach. His lessons covered every aspect of jones's intellectual growth and presentation of self, including schooling in what we now call "emotional intelligence:'Dickerson set the highest standards for jones, especially in the area of communication skills - a facility we've found essential to leadership. Dickerson edited jones's early attempts at writing a sports column with respectful ruthlessness, in red ink, as jones remembers to this day-marking up the copy so that it looked, as jones says,"like something chickens had a fight over!'But Dickerson also took the time to explain every single mistake and why it mattered. His mentor also expected the teenage Jones to speak correctly at all times and would hiss discreetly in his direction if he stumbled. Great expectations are evidence of great respect, and as Jones learned all the complex, often subtle lessons of how to succeed, he was motivated in no small measure by his desire not to disappoint the man he still calls "Mr. Dickerson'' Dickerson gave jones the kind of intensive mentoring that was tantamount to grooming him for a kind of professional and moral succession-and Jones has indeed become an instrument for the profound societal HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW Crucibles of Leadership • HBR AT LARGE It is the combination of hardiness and ability to grasp context that, above all, allows a person to not only survive an ordeal, but to learn from 1t,and to emerge stronger, more engaged,and more committed than ever. change for which Dickerson fought so courageously as well. }ones found lifechanging meaning in the attention Dickerson paid to him-attention fueled by a conviction that he, too,though only a teenager, had a vital role to play in society and an important destiny. Another story of a powerful mentor came to us from Michael Klein, a young man who made millions in Southern California real estate while sti ll in his teens, only to lose it by the time he turned 20 and then go on to start several other businesses. His mentor was his grandfather Max S. Klein, who created the paint-by-numbersfad that swept the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. Klein was only four or five years old when his grandfather approached him and offered to share his business expertise.Over the years, Michael Klein's grandfather taught him to learn from and to cope with change, and the two spoke by phone for an hour every day until shortly before Max Klein's death. year at 89. He identified his arduous training as a Marine during World War II as the crucible in which his leadership abilities emerged. Architect Frank Gehry spoke of the biases he experienced as a]ew in college.)effWilke, a general manager at a major manufacturer, told us of the day he learned that an employee had been killed in his pl ant- an experience that taught him that leadership was about much more than making quarterly numbers. So, what allowed these people to not only cope with these difficult situations but also learn from them' We believe that great leaders possess four essential skills, and, we were surprised to learn, these happen to be the same skills that allow a person to find meaning in what could be a debilitating experience. First is the ability to engage others in shared meaning. Consider Sidney Harman, who dived into a chaotic work environment to mobilize employees around an entirely new approach to management. Second is a distinctive and compelling voice. Look at Jack Coleman's ability to defuse a potentially violent situation with only his words.Third is a sense of integrity (including a strong set of values). Here, we point again to Coleman, whose values prevailed even during the emotionally charged clash between peace demonstrators and the angry (and strong) former football team members. But by far the most critical skill of the four is what we call "adaptive capacity'' This is, in essence, applied creativity-an almost magical ability to transcend adversity, with all its attendant stresses, and to emerge stronger than before. It's composed of two primary qualities: the ability to grasp context, and hardiness. The ability to grasp context implies an ability to weigh a welter of factors, ranging from how very different groups of The Essentials of Leadership In our interviews, we heard many other stories of crucible experiences.Take Jack Coleman, 78-year-old former president of Haverford College in Pennsylvania. He told us of one day, during the Vietnam War, when he heard that a group of students was planning to pull down the American flag and burn it-a nd that former members of the school's football team were going to make sure the students didn't succeed. Seemingly out of nowhere, Coleman had the idea to preempt the violence by suggesting that the protesting students take down the flag, wash it, and then put it back up-a crucible moment that even now elicits tremendous emotion in Coleman as he describes that day. There's also Common cause founder John W. Gardner, who died earlier this SEPTI:.MBER 2002 people will interpret a gesture to being able to put a situation in perspective. Without this, leaders are utterly lost, because they cannot connect with their constituents. M. Douglas Ivester, who succeeded Roberto Goizueta at CocaCola, exhibited a woeful inability to grasp context, lasting just 28 months on the job. For example, he demoted his highest-ranked African-American employee even as the company was losing a $200 million class-action suit brought by black employees- and this in Atlanta, a city with a powerful AfricanAmerican majority. Contrast Ivester with Vernon Jordan.Jordan realized his boss's time was up-not just his time in power, but the era that formed him.And so Jordan was able to see past the insults and recognize his boss's bitterness for what it was-desperate lashing out. Hardiness is just what it sounds likethe perseverance and toughness that enable people to emerge from devastating circumstances without losing hope. Look at Michael Klein, who experienced failure but didn't let it defeat him. He found himself with a single asset-a tiny software company he'd acquired. Klein built it into Transoft Networks, which Hewlett-Packard acquired in 1999.Consider, too, Mickie Siebert, who used her sense of humor to curtail offensive conversations. Or Sidney Rittenberg's strength during his imprisonment. He drew on his personal memories and inner strength to emerge from his lengthy prison term without bitterness. It is the combination of hardiness and ability to grasp context that, above all, allows a person to not onl y survive an ordeal, but to learn from it, and to emerge stronger, more engaged, and more committed than ever.These attributes allow leaders to grow from their crucibles, instead of being destroyed by them-to find opportunity where others might find only despair.This is the stuff of true leadership. e Reprint R0209B To order repnnu, see the last page of Executive Summaries. To further explore the topic of this article, go to www.explore.hbr.org. 45