Guest Insights

For years our organization, a scholarly publisher, has prided itself on its employee-friendly culture. Our mission statement, after mentioning our products and finances, says we aim "to establish a culture of meaningful employment and professional development." Over the last several years, I have realized this mission statement has it all wrong.

Elite colleges perceive themselves as incubators for future leaders, but liberal-arts schools are not doing enough to train leaders.

During my senior year at Harvard College in 2005, I realized that while I was receiving an excellent education, I was not learning how to translate that knowledge into leadership. The "how" was missing. Classes were all about lectures, papers or problem sets. Yet I believed, and still do, that leadership begins with understanding yourself. Only then can you go into the world and motivate others toward a socially responsible vision.

When I showed up for my first job as a management consultant--a job that I imagined would soon require me to make tough decisions involving the fate of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in profits--I felt ready to lead. I had read Tom Peters' In Search of Excellence cover to cover. I had read Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. Excellence in leadership, I decided, was my thing.

Great was my surprise, of course, when I finally started work. As I chatted with the bright young people who had been hired along with me, many of them products of the finest business schools, it hit me. They were leadership experts too! We were all leaders!

She has a second-grade education. I have two higher degrees. She can barely read and write. I'm working on two books. She had no encouragement or training. I have participated in more leadership seminars than I can count. Who is a better leader?

True leadership has nothing to do with education, eloquence or training. People can be taught to direct groups or manage organizations, but true leaders are born when extreme challenge meets incredible courage, usually under tremendous pressure, making the strongest alloy inside the people who transform our world--creating those with the right "mettle" to lead.

This past September, more than 1,500 young adults began a challenging year of full-time service to the nation as City Year corps members; they will be working in schools in an effort to address the nation's high school-dropout crisis.

Data shows our corps members can have a positive impact on student academic achievement. Equally important, research shows that the corps members themselves will emerge from the experience more likely to vote and volunteer than their peers who did not serve. Still, we in the national-service community ask ourselves: Are we making the most of this opportunity to set these volunteers on the path to a lifetime of civic leadership?

The first football game I ever saw was the 1970 Super Bowl between the Vikings and the Chiefs. Five years old, I at my parents' friends house, I took a break from playing with the other kids and went into the living room to see what all the shouting was about. It was one of those "idiot savant" moments when I just understood exactly how the game worked without being able to articulate it. I was hooked!

I had the incredible honor of working for the late great Bo Schembechler during my four years as an undergraduate at Michigan and through him I learned about all aspects of the game. So hooked am I on football, I endured a not-so-great 20-year marriage because my now-ex-husband was a great football coach. I have been on the sidelines in one form or another -- recruiting assistant, water girl, ardent fan -- most of my life.

Confidence in our leaders--and trust in the institutions they lead--are essential if we, as Americans, are to be expected to embrace the policies they propose and the decisions they render. That's one reason why it's so essential--and on a regular and recurring basis--to take the nation's temperature with respect to these basic but critical measures. And that's just what the National Leadership Index, conducted by Harvard Kennedy School's Center for Public Leadership and the Merriman River Group, has been doing for five years now.

One thing I've learned from years of coaching, teaching and writing about leadership is that if you want to get people engaged you address a point of pain. Judged by the reaction of my last column on poor management, the frustration and irritation (even anger) is real when it comes to dealing with a bad boss. Sadly, poor management is an epidemic, but that that is no panacea. The real question is what you do about.

Before joining Teach For America, I had held several leadership positions--the kind that look good on paper and probably helped me get accepted into such a selective teaching corps -- but the truth is that I knew very little about leadership until I became a teacher.

Have you ever wondered what it's like to conduct a word-class professional orchestra?

For the seasoned maestro it can feel like the ultimate dream come true. During the performance the orchestra seems to read your mind, knowing exactly how you'd wish to shape this phrase or pace that crescendo. The musicians' collective skill instantly serves up the very sound you just imagined. They respond with an amazing unity to the subtlest motions of your baton, the slightest movements of your hands, and even to your unconscious facial expressions.

One of the most moving example of leadership that I found while researching my book Trade-Off: Why Some Things Catch On and Others Don't turned up in a small-town agency that helps people with disabilities find jobs.