HBR Classics on LeadershipTransitionsJANUARY 01, 2009

Throughout its 87-year history, Harvard Business Review has published articles to

assist leaders in times of transition. If our special issue on that theme whets your

appetite for more, we invite you to enjoy free online access during January 2009 to

the articles summarized here.

The Leadership Journey

Leonard D. Schaeffer

October 2002

When HBR published this first-person account, Leonard Schaeffer had already been at the

helm of WellPoint (and its predecessor firm, Blue Cross of California) for 16 years. Over that

time, he’d brought the company back from the brink of failure and built it into one of the

United States’ largest health insurers. The article, however, is less about the triumphs of the

company than about the progress of Schaeffer himself as an executive. In it, he describes his

journey from the autocrat he needed to be in the early days of the turnaround to the

participative leader who could confidently give free rein to others in day-to-day decision

making and, ultimately, to the reformer taking on industrywide issues and showing others

that a new way was possible.

Saving Your Rookie Managers from Themselves

Carol A. Walker

April 2002

Get a seasoned executive coach talking—and the stories start spilling. Carol Walker is no

exception to the rule, and here she mines her many clients’ tales to provide a guide to

avoiding new-manager missteps. In her experience, anybody moving from an individual-

contributor role to a new leadership position struggles with delegating, getting support from

above, projecting confidence, focusing on the big picture, and giving constructive feedback.

In sections devoted to each of these challenges, she teaches upper management how to read

the signs that a rookie manager is in trouble and gives the rookie advice on how to rise to the

occasion. As Walker observes, “The most basic elements of management are often what trip

up managers early in their careers. And because they are the basics, the bosses of rookie

managers often take them for granted.”

Managers and Leaders: Are They Different?

Abraham Zaleznik

May–June 1977

You’ve heard about the distinction between management and leadership—this is the article

that put it on everyone’s radar. Abe Zaleznik stated that “managers and leaders are very

different kinds of people. They differ in motivation, in personal history, and in how they

think and act.” For example, whereas managers act to limit choices, leaders generate and

solicit new possibilities. When managers communicate with subordinates, they often use

signals that are subtle in order to diffuse emotion and soft-pedal the question of who’s won

and who’s lost. Leaders are not so ambiguous; they state each position clearly, knowing full

well that some people won’t like the message. What do such fundamental differences imply

for the manager aspiring to the corner office? Or, as Zaleznik puts it, “can organizations

develop leaders?” Surely they must be able to, but in his view, that will happen only with the

highest level of investment: through an apprenticeship model that requires one-to-one

relationships between today’s leaders and those thought to have the potential to be

tomorrow’s.

The Dark Side of CEO Succession

Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries

January–February 1988

The higher up the greasy pole you go, the tougher your leadership transitions become. As the

corporate world has repeatedly demonstrated, CEOs find it most difficult to let go. That’s why

Manfred Kets de Vries, the noted European leadership expert, called this phenomenon the

dark side of CEO succession. In 1988, he applied his deep understanding of psychiatry to find

that behind each succession battle lies a psychological drama—and that the key actors usually

aren’t aware of it. Kets de Vries describes three stages at which harmful forces rise to the

surface. The first commences when a CEO, often reluctantly, comes to terms with the fact

that he should step down. The second starts when the CEO and his handpicked team identify

possible successors. The third, and most protracted, psychological tussle begins the moment

the new CEO takes over. Interestingly, the author argues that it’s the company’s board, rather

than the senior executive team, that can catalyze successful transitions.

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