Harvard Business Review on Leadership at the Top

This is one in a series of several dozen volumes that comprise the "Harvard Business Review Paperback Series." Each offers direct, convenient, and inexpensive access to the best thinking on the given subject in articles originally published by the Harvard Business School Review. I strongly recommend all of the volumes in the series. The individual titles are listed at this Web site: www.hbsp.harvard.edu. The authors of various articles are among the world's most highly regarding experts on the given subject. Each volume has been carefully edited. Supplementary commentaries are also provided in most of the volumes, as is an "About the Contributors" section that usually includes suggestions of other sources that some readers may wish to explore. In this volume, the reader is provided with eight articles. Given when they first appeared in the HBR, some but remarkably little of the material has become dated. Here are brief excerpts from the executive summaries with precede two of them: On why the belief in powers of charismatic CEOs can be problematic: "First, [Rakesh] Khurana says, there's no conclusive evidence that charismatic leadership affects an organization's performance...Second, the insistence on finding a charismatic leader, combined with the unidentifiable nature of charisma, results in selection processes that are overly conservative and even irrational." (The Curse of the Superstar CEO, Rakesh Khurana, 2002) NOTE: This article was later developed into a book, Searching for a Corporate Savior: The Irrational Quest for Charismatic CEOs, published by Princeton University Press in 2002. "So, what can a narcissistic leader do to avoid the traps of his own personality? First, he can find a trusted sidekick [who] can point out the operational requirements of the narcissistic leaders often grandiose vision and keep him rooted in reality...Second, the narcissistic leader can get the people in the organization to identify with his goals, to think the way he does, and to become the living embodiment of the company. Finally, if narcissistic leaders can be persuaded to undergo therapy, they can use tools such as psychoanalysis to overcome vital character flaws." (Narcissistic Leaders: The Inevitable Pros, the Inevitable Cons, Michael Maccoby, 2000). NOTE: This article was later developed into a book, The Productive Narcissist: The Promise and Peril of Visionary Leadership, published by Broadway Books/Random House in 2003. Those with a special interest in this subject may also wish to check out Jean Lipman-Blumen's The Allure of Toxic Leaders: Why We Follow Destructive Bosses and Corrupt Politicians--and How We Can Survive Them (2005). These brief comments concerning two of the eight articles in this anthology correctly indicate a few of several different perspectives on the perils as well as the opportunities for leaders at the highest levels of a given organization. This is what Richard S. Tedlow has in mind when concluding his article, Wha