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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