March 2011

In this Issue:

ConnectorMember

P a g e 2Board’s Corner: Leadership and Service in Israel

P a g e 4ILA Space Update

P a g e 5Community Updates

P a g e 6Featured Publication and Author Interview: Thinking about Leadership by Nannerl Keohane

P a g e 1 6Spotlight on National Outdoor Leadership School Professional Training: Leadership Wilderness-Style

P a g e 1 8Benefits Portfolio: Member Discount to Leadershape Institute

P a g e 1 9Community Kiosk

P a g e 1 9Job Listings

P a g e 2 0Calendar of Events Plan now to attend this great ILA conference October 26-29,

London, UK. Questions? Conferences@ila-net.org

Record Number of Proposals Received for ILA 2011!

We’re thrilled to announce that this year’s conference One Planet, Many Worlds: Remapping the Purposes of Leadership received 512 complete proposals, topping last year’s record breaking milestone of 500 complete proposals. A testament to the association’s continued growth, this accomplishment also speaks to the interest and buzz being generated by this year’s theme. As conference chair Jonathan Gosling explains:

The key questions that we wish to explore in support of the conference theme include: What do we think leadership is for? How does this vary across places, classes and sectors? How do we mediate differences and conflicts of purpose? Are some purposes subordinate to others, and how is this decided? What is the relation between the ends to which leaders direct us, and the means they employ – especially in the light of the environmental, social and economic challenges that we face?

A record number of submissions requires a record number of volunteers! This year the ILA welcomed the work of 296 volunteer peer reviewers for the first of three rounds of review. Thank you! These peer reviewers were typically assigned between 10-15 proposals to read and assess in a double-blind peer review. Each track assigned two to four reviewers per proposal. If a proposal was submitted to two tracks, that means up to eight peer reviewers looked at it. Track leaders are now in the process of making decisions on which proposals to recommend for acceptance. Final notifications will be sent out by the end of May once the program team has finalized the program.

(March 2011) The Member Connector, International Leadership Association, www.ila-net.org, www.ILASpace.org

BoardC O R N E R

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by Max Klau, ILA Board Member & Director of Leadership Development, City Year

How do you best develop civic leaders through a long-term service experi-ence?

It’s a question that has been very much on the mind of an organi-zation called Masa Is-

rael Journey. Masa serves as a clear-inghouse for long-term programs in Israel; it seeks to give young adults from America and around the world the chance to spend five months or more living and working in Israel. Masa supports a diverse collection of nearly two hundred different programs. Visit the organization’s website and you’ll find opportuni-ties to intern at Israeli businesses, study dance, engage in the study of religion or archaeology…. and do service.

Last year, as nearly ten thousand young adults (ages 22-30) participat-ed in these programs, Masa noticed a clear trend towards greater inter-est in service. More of the young adults who came to Masa looking for opportunities were interested in service, and a growing number of programs in Israel were focused on providing full-time service experienc-es. Many of these service programs

marketed themselves as service and leadership development ex-periences, but Masa had come to an important realization: All too often, these programs had no real clarity about what they

meant when they said they devel-oped leaders.

Recognizing that leadership devel-opment was an important frontier

of inquiry for their work, Masa came up with an exciting plan to take their efforts to the next level: They com-mitted to organizing a study tour that would bring together leading thinkers from both the secular and Jewish ser-vice movements for a week-long learn-ing journey in Israel that would occur this past November 12th to 19th. I was thrilled and deeply honored when they asked me to serve as chairperson for the trip.

Working in close collaboration with the Masa staff, we created our ideal list of individuals and organizations that we would like to have involved and, to a remark-able degree, we were able to pull that group together. Rep-resentatives from some of the highest profile organizations in the secular service world signed on, includ-ing the Peace Corps, Teach for Amer-ica, the Corporation for National and Community Service, and City Year. We also invited the most prominent organizations in the Jewish service world: American Jewish World Ser-vice, Repair the World, Avodah (The Jewish Service Corps), Uri L’Tzedek, and others. In the end, our group in-cluded nineteen remarkable individuals who collectively brought decades of experience and insight to the work of developing leaders through long term service experiences.

The study tour would bring this high-octane group together for a full week

of intense learning and exploration. It was a remarkable opportunity, and a great deal of thought was put into designing the experience to ensure that we made the most of this once-in-a-lifetime learning experience. We pulled together a variety of conceptual frameworks to help unleash the full potential of the trip. An overview of the design framework is as follows:

Theory U: Otto Scharmer’s frame-work for learning how to “lead from the future as it emerges” was a central design component of the trip. Ev-

ery day we would be visiting service programs to meet staff and participants and see the work happening on the ground. We under-stood ourselves to be doing more than simply downloading current theories and identifying existing

best practices. We challenged our-selves to take in all that we saw, and then—through an ongoing process of reflection and inquiry—try to identify what new ideas and practices needed to emerge to take leadership develop-ment through service powerfully into the 21st century.

Real-Life Cases: Every day involved one or two site visits followed by a three hour “case consultation session.” The first hour was a presentation by an Israeli organization focused on their theory and practice of leadership development, and the second hour was a presentation by a North Ameri-can organization on the same topic. The third hour was devoted to a dis-

Leadership and Service in Israel: A Learning Journey

Masa Study Group of Leading Thinkers from the Service Movement

The Member Connector, International Leadership Association, www.ila-net.org, www.ILASpace.org (March 2011)

3.cussion of any themes that emerged across all we had learned to date.

Case-in-Point Learning: Recogniz-ing that we embodied the very global service movement we sought to influ-ence, we agreed to use our own group dynamics as data that could inform our learning. How did we engage the question of how best to develop leaders through service? Within our group, what got talked about, and what was avoided? Why? What could we learn from our ourselves as a case-in-point ex-periment in influenc-ing the theory and practice of leadership development through service?

The participants proved eager to en-gage in this type of learning and jumped in with both feet. From our first dinner to-gether to our last clos-ing session seven days later, we lived and learned together in a remarkably intense, provocative, generative, and creative container. As we journeyed together through one of the most beautiful, ancient, modern, spiritual, and complex nations on earth, we pushed and challenged each other to think deeply about the programs we were visiting, the people we were meeting, the practices we encoun-tered, and the ideas and assumptions we each brought to the question at the center of our journey.

Each week day on the trip had a theme, allowing us to take a deep dive into different types of service experi-ences. We visited programs that built capacity in non-profits, focused on community development, worked for co-existence between Israelis and Palestinians, and integrated volunteers into the Israeli education system. Each day took us deeper into the ques-

tion that became almost a mantra over the course of the week: How do you best develop civic leaders through a long term service experience?

Given the richness and complexity of this learning journey, I’m sure each of us emerged with our own unique set of key lessons learned. Here, then, are some of mine:

It was apparent that several programs we visited had trouble explaining their theory and practice of leadership de-

velopment, but found it much easier dis-cussing what they sought to achieve in developing vol-unteers. There was clearly something about the term leadership that made them uncomfortable,

and our presence and willingness to simply ask them how they understood their work generated some valuable introspection and clarity. It was ap-parent that some of these service pro-grams have operated for years without engaging deeply with the question of how they understand and practice leadership development; there is an opportunity here to improve practice through having programs develop their own theories of change and logic mod-els.

Similarly, over time I came to recog-nize that at programs that made reflec-tion a priority, volunteers were able to articulate both the program’s philoso-phy and their own inner experiences with noticeably more ease and clarity than programs that did not make time for reflection. Over the course of the week, I became more firmly convinced that programs that promoted greater levels of self-awareness in volunteers

through reflection were able to deepen the trans-formational impact of the long-term service experi-ence.

Also, I learned that programs must operate from a deep apprecia-tion for the centrality of working with a community, as opposed to providing service to a com-munity; service that is not grounded in a sense of sacred partnership is likely to do more harm than good to all involved. Striking the right bal-ance between a focus on high quality service and a focus on developing the volunteers is essential. Also, attend-ing to how volunteers are being—not just what they are doing—is an emerging frontier of innovation for service programs.

Finally, if programs seek to unleash the full potential of service as a lead-ership development experience, they must learn how to create spaces for peer-to-peer dialogue that are infused with a spirit of genuine inquiry and engagement with questions of how best to lead through one’s service. If I learned anything from this remark-able week-long learning journey, it is that such spaces are both rare and powerful.

In a very real sense, this group rep-resented a microcosm of the global service movement. By pulling this group together for such an intense learning experience, Masa launched a whole new level of conversation about leadership among some of the biggest and best-known service pro-grams in the world. Several exciting new opportunities for collaboration and innovation have already emerged from this group. I’m confident that we’ve only seen the beginning of a new era of focus on the increasingly vital question of how best to develop leaders through long-term service ex-periences.

Jerusalem

(March 2011) The Member Connector, International Leadership Association, www.ila-net.org, www.ILASpace.org

4.

Leading in a Virtualized World: 10 Traits of a Cyber Leader. In this post, Jim Taggart shares some of his experiences, meditates on the impact of a more virtual world, and imagines a ‘Cyber Leader’ construct - outlining 10 specific traits requisite to effective Cyber

Leadership in the process. What do you think of these traits? Can you think of others? [Read and comment here]

Distributed Leadership: Opening-Up Space for Action. In this post, Don Dunoon discusses distributed lead-ership via reflections on a workshop he recently facilitated. In highlighting a story he encountered in this workshop, he identifies several questions about how distributed leadership may be achieved – or lost. [Read and comment here]

Technology in Leadership Education & Practice is our Featured Group this month. Do you have an interest in the use of technology (including virtual environments and online re-sources) in the field of leadership education and practice? Consider joining this group,

where thoughts, experiences, and resources may be shared. [Access the group here]

Leadership Library. Have a cogent article, study, or tidbit to share? Do so at the Leadership Library, a new group created to be a “collection of leadership articles, books, and other documents to share and dis-cuss.” [Access the group here]

New look and feel! ILASpace forums are now organized into categories for easy naviga-tion and consumption. Visit the forums today! [Click here to access the forums]

New ILASpace Profile Question. Now you can indicate in your ILASpace profile to which ILA communities you belong. This will help other ILA members to find you based on shared interests. Visit ILASpace today and click “Settings” to select your ILA communities.

[Click here to edit your profile]

Wish you had fewer usernames and passwords? You’re in luck! ILASpace users may now sign into ILASpace using their Facebook, Google, or Yahoo! accounts. To connect your ILASpace profile to one of these ac-counts, navigate to your profile, then Settings > Connections. [Click here to learn more]

Welcome our new ILASpace community members: Nance Goldstein, Ian Sutherland, Gloria Burgess, Susan Keim, Janice Abarbanel, Donna Claire Read, Angela Spranger, Laura Shelley, and Theresa Murray.

Have a leadership question or dilemma? Have an interesting resource to share or need help finding one? Use ILASpace, the online network exclusively for members of the ILA!

Groups | Forums | Events | Blogs | Community

Join the 560 other ILA members already on ILASpace as

we connect on leadership questions and issues!

Each month we feature select new content from

ILASpace, your online member community.

Login today to access.

Blogs

Groups

Forums

Profiles

People

The Member Connector, International Leadership Association, www.ila-net.org, www.ILASpace.org (March 2011)

What’s New in ILA’s Member Communities?All members of the ILA are encouraged to participate in one or more member communities. Information about the different communities is available under the “Communities” tab at www.ila-net.org. Plus, members can interact with each other under the auspices of the different groups on ILASpace (www.ILASpace.org). For general questions about member communities contact Josh Tarr, Coordinator of Conferences & Member Communities at jtarr@ila-net.org.

Community Updates

ILA Communities Online

For More Information follow the links from: www.ila-net.org/Communities

Connect, Converse, and Collaborate at: www.ILASpace.org

Share & Learn via the Followership Learning Community Wiki at: followership2.pbworks.com

Leadership Development Member Interest Group (MIG)Thanks to everyone who submitted a proposal or volunteered to review for our track. We are in the process of having blind reviews of each proposal by four anonymous reviewers before heading into a second round of review.

In the meantime, we are working to bring more international voices and perspectives to the LD area in both our online ILA modality and our 2011 Conference. See, for example, our posting on ILA Space

for a synopsis of the conversation on Challenges Facing Leaders in Latin America which took place during the Boston 2010 Conference We are excited about being in London before the 2012 Olympics, and would like to ask for your input about what activities you might like to engage in while in London (see ILA Space). Check our online space for opportunities to provide input for our planning teams.

For more information and to become involved with the Leadership Development MIG,

contact MIG Chair Laura Santana at santanal@ccl.org or MIG Chair-Elect Tom Sechrest at thomasls@stedwards.edu.

Vision: Transforming Leadership Knowledge and Practice Worldwide.

Mission: The International Leadership Association (ILA) is the global network for all those who practice, study, and teach leadership. The ILA promotes a deeper understanding of leadership knowledge and practices for the greater good of individuals and communities worldwide.

Our Commitment: The principal means by which our mission is accomplished is through the synergy that occurs by bringing together public and private sector leaders, scholars, educators, businesses, and consultants from many disciplines and many nations.

Our Values: Inclusion: Nurtures and promotes broad and diverse membership engagement; Intent: Encourages leadership initiatives that advance the field of leadership and contribute to the greater global good; Interconnection: Builds upon the shared interests and complementary talents of members to support individual and collective goals; International perspectives: Respects cultural contexts and facilitates learning and networking across national boundaries; Integrity: Insists upon effective and ethical leadership practices and sound scholarship.

ILA

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(March 2011) The Member Connector, International Leadership Association, www.ila-net.org, www.ILASpace.org

Featured Publication & Author Interview

by Nannerl Keohane (Princeton U.P., 2010)

Thinking about Leadership

Our guest interviewer this month is Susan R. Madsen. Susan is an associate professor of management at Utah Valley University and an independent leadership and change consultant. She has been heavily involved

for many years in researching the lifetime development of prominent women leaders. During the course of her work, she has personally interviewed numerous women university presidents, governors, and in-ternational leaders. Her books include On Becoming a Woman Leader: Learning from the Experiences of University Presidents (2008) and Developing Leadership: Learning from the Expe-riences of Women Governors (2009).

Author Nannerl O. Keohane is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Distinguished Visiting Professor of Public Affairs and the University Center for Human Values

at Princeton University and former president of Wellesley College and Duke University. She is the author of Higher Ground: Ethics and Leadership in the Modern University and Philosophy and the State in France: The Renaissance to the Enlightenment.

Susan: I’m always interested to find out what inspires authors to write books on

leadership. So, what inspired you to write this book, and why did you choose the title Thinking

about Leadership?

Nan: From the time I became President of Wellesley, I had wanted to reflect on leadership. I took the job for many reasons but, in part, because as a political theorist, I was really interested in understanding leadership or holding power from the inside. And I told myself when I took the job, I will learn more about what it feels like and someday I’ll come back and write about it. So I’ve thought about this book, in a general sense, for twenty, thirty years, but this was the first time I could sit down and really reflect on it. The title was chosen by the publisher. My alternative was “Leading Questions” and he said that wasn’t a good title for many reasons and so he suggested Thinking about Leadership and it sounded good to me.

I really like the title because that’s exactly what you do—think about leadership.

That’s right. And, that was his point. So, I was convinced he was right from the start. You chose five or six core topics that seemed to emerge from important insights you’ve gathered from your background and experiences, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. In the introduction you outlined the purposes of your book. One was “to provide a fuller sense of the aims and activities of leaders and suggest how we might judge their performance,” and the second was “to help clear away some

of the underbrush to permit a clearer view of the subjects we were exploring.” How do you think your book does both of these?

That’s a very good question. If you’re going to say something is among your aims, you ought to do it. It’s easier to answer the second one. The clearing away of the underbrush is, as you probably know, a reference to a phrase of John Locke’s when he described his aims as a theorist. I thought that was a good model. I was not trying to set up a whole new structure about leadership—invent a theoretical structure with lots of bells and whistles—instead I wanted to get rid of some of the preconceptions or some of the smoke and mirrors so that people could see more clearly what the essential features of leadership are and how we might go about understanding them better. The idea of getting rid of some of the extraneous stuff or some of the stereotypes, some of the overly rhetorical glib comments about leadership was my way of clearing away the underbrush. So we’re really focusing on what’s central to leadership, what’s important about it in direct and relatively straightforward ways.

In terms of the first point about the aims and activities of leaders and judging their performance, in the book itself I don’t talk that much about what criteria we might use to judge a leader’s performance, but I do discuss the importance of certain kinds of activities on the part of leaders, whether it’s learning how

6.

ILA Memberslogin at www.ila-net.org and navigate to eBenefits -> Chapter Downloads

to access Chapter 5: How Does Leadership Work in a

Democracy?

The Member Connector, International Leadership Association, www.ila-net.org, www.ILASpace.org (March 2011)

to make good decisions, managing their closest followers, choosing good people, relating well to the folks who are following them—in a sense of being trustworthy—and reaching out to ask for suggestions. We judge a leader, in part, by results. When a leader has set forward goals that we have, in some sense, endorsed or participated in, then if that leader provides ways for us to work together to achieve those goals, that should count as a form of success. But it is an even better record if the goals are achieved through methods or activities which are engaging of others, which are honest and straightforward, activities that show clarity of perception and a sense of consequences for the long run. So it’s a complicated issue. I don’t have a formula for judging leaders, but I do think we should pay attention both to how well they achieve the aims they have clarified or enunciated and also the kinds of methods they use to get there. I think you’re right. You wrote about the importance of being both inside and outside as an observer in looking at leadership and understanding it. You mentioned that an outside observer is likely to be more aware of the impact of a leader’s activities, and to see more clearly how a leader influences other people. Yet, you also explained that leadership has to be seen from the inside as well to really have that well-rounded appreciation for what’s involved. How do you bring together both of those perspectives in moving this leadership dialogue forward?

I do try to bring both those perspectives. I suppose what’s most unusual about the book is the attempt to show the inside perspective from the point of view of someone who’s actually held leadership positions and had

some power, but to do so not as an account of one’s own activities, not as a memoir, but instead with an analysis of what it is you think you were doing and how you approach the activities of a leader—making decisions, appointing other people to work with you, etcetera—and how it feels to be actually doing that rather than looking at it from the perspective of folks who are being affected or who are seeing the results. I also think that chapter six of the book [“How Do Character, Ethics and Leadership Interact”] is quite important on this point because as you know, it’s a lot about the ways that leadership can have an impact on you. Holding power can make a difference in both your perception of the world—your take on the world—and also, at some level, your personality because it is different from not having power. I was trying to recount that as well. It’s a lot about the ways in which having power can have an influence on your character, the personal characteristics that might lead you to choose to have power and the specific kinds of ethical challenges you’re likely to face in holding power or being a leader which are in some ways similar and in some ways different from challenges that you face ethically as an ordinary individual going about your daily life. So I was thinking about those activities that you really can only see if you are in the position of leadership or, if like Machiavelli or the advisors of a president, you’re working very, very closely with some powerful people.

On the other hand, there are certain things that are really hard to see from the inside. You don’t have as clear a sense of how other people are going to be affected by your activities because you’re thinking about issues both from an instrumental and from a goals oriented point of view and less from a view of how each individual

who is touched is going to have some aspects of his or her own life changed with some new opportunities opened or others that may be foreclosed on. A leader who is making decisions is not usually thinking in any depth about how this is going to feel for the individuals who are affected, partly because, often, there are just too many people to make those kinds of judgments and also because you never really know how it feels.

One of the best phrases here would be Aristotle’s: the wearer of the shoe is in a better position to judge the shoe than the cobbler. The cobbler may think he’s made a beautiful shoe but if it pinches and it makes it impossible to walk, it’s not a good shoe. But, only the person who wears the shoe knows that. So it’s like the follower is wearing the shoe and the leader is making the shoe. But, on the other hand, the follower doesn’t necessarily know how to make shoes and the cobbler or the leader is crafting the framework or guiding the situation.

That is a great analogy.

Well, Aristotle has a lot of great analogies.

While serving as a college or university president multiple times you really had that inside view, yet you do state that there are some things that you did not see from the inside. How were you able to get that outside view while you were on the inside?

I do talk about that at several points in the book, as you know, and it is a subject of particular interest to me. One aspect of it is that you reach out to the people whom you trust who are closest to you but who are also, in a sense, on the outside. They’re sort of quasi inside and quasi outside

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and you say, so tell me how this policy is affecting people, tell me what the impact of these decisions really is, and tell me how our decisions are regarded by the folks who are supposed to be affected by them. People who are around you whom you trust, but who have some distance from what you’re doing, can give you thoughtful answers on that. They can convey what they hear from others about both the strengths and the weaknesses of what you’re doing and you have to be really open to this. You have to be open to critical comments as well as praise. One of the things I say fairly often is that leaders are very subject to flattery. It’s very easy to assume that everything is just going hunky-dory—particularly if you’re doing a good job—and that everybody thinks you’re great whereas in fact, there may be a good deal of grumbling in the background that you don’t hear. But, if you have some people around you whose ears are attuned to the grumbling and who are not out there just to undermine you or cut you down but who are really invested in your success, they can say, look, here’s a problem that is being perceived about what you’re doing that you’re not hearing about directly but if you allow it to fester, it’s going to come back and really haunt you. That’s the kind of comments you can get if you have people around you whom you can trust.

You also need to be open to wider forms of communication. This is one of the things that are distinctive about a democracy. There will be the press. There will be the

blogs. There will be a lot of people who will be running their

mouths off about what’s good and what’s bad about your work. You

can’t spend all your time reading those papers and those blogs but you can have people around you

who pay some attention to them.

And, you ought to at least sometimes dip into them yourself and not just trust somebody coming to you with a digested summary.

Of course it’s really hard to accept the kind of criticism that can sometimes come, especially if you think it’s ignorant or misguided which [chuckle] it sometimes is. It’s not as though critics are always right; but you still need to know what the critics are saying, at some level—particularly if it’s being said by thoughtful people who are not just exercising their right of griping—in order to do a better job. You may want either to adjust your course a little bit or explain what you’re doing more clearly or in a different way. Taking such steps may remove some impediments that would otherwise lie in your path. It can take a lot of time to clean up messes or deal with roadblocks. If you can figure out in advance where they’re likely to spring up, and try to make it less likely that they will appear, you’ll have more energy to spend on positive things.

Excellent. I did appreciate and enjoy your notion of family resemblances. This was a different way for me to think through the leadership issues you presented. Can you explain what you mean by that term and then how it relates to leadership? Right. Ludwig Wittgenstein developed this notion of “family resemblances” to describe what it is that different forms of games have in common. Ball games, card games, word games, he would have used video games if they had existed at the time. Lacrosse and chess seem like very different phenomena; what do these games have in common? And his point was that lacrosse and chess and Scrabble don’t have any single thing in common, but they have some common patterns or they share

some overlaps like competition or seeking certain types of goals. They have things in common in much the same way that members of a family resemble one another. The things we call games all share at least some aspects which are similar even if no single two games are alike in every respect.

And I found that very helpful in thinking about leadership because, as you know, one of the things I wrestled with from the beginning in the book is how many different kinds of activities are described with the name leadership, everything from the chief of a homeless community or a volunteer leader on a desert island to the head of an empire. We call them all leaders. The warlords in Afghanistan or a gang leader in New York or a Cub Scout troop master, we call them all leaders.

How can we use the term leader to describe all of these? Yet we do. So I boil this down, in the best instance I think, to my definition of leadership. Leaders define or clarify goals for a group of individuals and bring together the energies of members of those groups to pursue them. That statement of defining or clarifying goals and bringing or mobilizing energies together to pursue them is true of all the types of leaders that I suggested even though they use very different methods and they set very different goals. The goals of a Cub Scoutmaster are totally different from those of an Afghanistan warlord, but they’re both setting goals and they’re both mobilizing energies to pursue them. So that’s an example of a family resemblance across activities that otherwise seem very different.

Thank you. Early in the book you made a statement that I found very interesting. You wrote “we should avoid either idolizing or demonizing our leaders if we are to understand what they do

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The Member Connector, International Leadership Association, www.ila-net.org, www.ILASpace.org (March 2011)

in society and how leadership might be exercised effectively and responsibly.” I think we do this a lot in our society. Can you give any specific examples of how doing this has really prevented us from understanding?

This is one of those places where I had current events in mind. But I also drew on my training in French history and political philosophy because before the French Revolution, a lot of Frenchmen tended to idolize their kings. They thought their monarchs were the source of all earthly good. They could heal illnesses. They brought beneficence to the land. We were in Egypt in early January, before the revolution there, and I noted how the Pharaohs historically were regarded as the source of food. They were the source of everything. That would be literally idolizing, making these people gods. Sometimes leaders are regarded that way in many different cultures.

In the U.S., the tendency is more likely to be the opposite. We demonize our leaders in the sense of regarding them with suspicion or as the sources of harm to us if they’re trying to do things that we don’t like or if we don’t like the way they’re going about their business. It’s not as though everybody demonizes our leaders or that we all demonize every leader, but there’s a sense on the part of some people in the current world—not just in the United States of America—that politics is messy or even evil. There’s a sense that most people who go into politics are motivated solely by the desire for power or the desire to get rich. This pervasive attitude involves thinking that these leaders are probably not morally good people, after all, and therefore you look for the flaws in a leader and say, see I told you so, rather than trying to see why some of them may in fact be acting out of

very good motives, really wanting to try to make the community better.

They’re still ordinary human beings and we’re not likely to idolize them but I was also thinking that even in a country like ours, there’s a lot of ceremony and pomp that surrounds our leaders—whether it’s the twenty-one gun salutes or “Hail to the Chief” or the ways in which we see the President as a person apart. Even in a democracy like ours where the leaders are heavily criticized, there can be a little bit of a sense of idolization too. So both these things are present in lots of different types of societies. And when we make those judgments either way about our leaders, I think it pulls us in emotionally so that we can’t really understand or judge logically.

I think that’s true. It’s a shortcut. You don’t really set out to say, “all right, this is a complicated human being in a very difficult and very complicated job, how can I understand as many of those different dimensions as possible.” We rarely think that way. It’s much easier to say, “this is a really good guy or this is a guy who I really don’t like.” It’s just easier to put people into cubbyholes like that. We do that in many parts of our lives but I think we often do it with leaders.

This leads us nicely into the next question. You discussed many amazing leaders throughout your book. Who would you say have been your top three favorite historical leaders to study and learn about?

I think my set might be surprising. It’s not as though they’re always the ones I admire the most. The way you asked the question, “Which are my favorites to study and write about?” I

would answer with examples that I choose partly because they are interesting, partly because I admire what they accomplished but partly because I’m just fascinated by the way they went about their work. The first is Nelson Mandela, whom I do admire a great deal. Next Franklin Roosevelt, because he was such a fascinating leader and although I admire him too, he was a more mixed human being in some ways than Nelson Mandela. Mandela is also a mixed human being, but he did so many good things in a very difficult situation. Roosevelt’s record was a little more mixed. He was basically a very strong leader but was a very complicated politician. I’m trying to figure out how he accomplished his goals through some pretty convoluted strategies. [Chuckle] It’s quite fascinating.

The third is Queen Elizabeth the First of England. I really became fascinated with how she approached power in her very difficult situation. She was a young woman coming to the throne without a lot of allies in a tremendously divided country, in terms of religion, and under a good deal of threat from Europe across the Channel. How she maneuvered her way through this, how she both acted as a woman and used some of her feminine qualities to accomplish some of her goals, but in other ways was very consciously a king and acting as a monarch in the traditional kingly way. I found her a fascinating leader. So those three would be my answer.

In your book you also mentioned some negative examples of leadership. Some authors have suggested that those who influence negatively should not be called leaders. You write that for an activity to be truly counted as leadership, the accomplishment

9.

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of goals—a foundational element—must include followers as willing individuals.

Yes. I do believe that. I think it partly depends on what you mean by willing individuals, but what I was trying to do was to say that even a Hitler, however evil his goals, has to be considered a leader by my definition in that he was defining and clarifying goals for the German people and mobilizing the energies of the people to pursue them. However horrific those goals were and however distasteful it is to think of the Germans pursuing those goals, he was providing leadership and they were willing, many of them.

And so what I’m trying to do by that distinction is to rule out leadership of a slave driver or a galley slave master who is whipping people at their posts. For activities like that, the human being gets reduced to a machine and the people are not in any sense willing except through fear of the consequences of disobeying. I don’t think that counts as leadership. That’s domination. That’s enslavement. So I was trying to draw a line there not so much in terms of the qualities of the motives or the praiseworthiness of the activities but in terms of the willing involvement of the followers. I’m drawing this from Max Weber, whom I have used a lot in the book; he said specifically that leadership must involve at least some willing followers, and I think he’s right. That to me is a more useful bright line distinction point than saying leaders must be doing good things. I think leaders sometimes

do bad things and so do followers, but that doesn’t mean that they therefore cease being leaders.

I agree. If people are

following them and they’re influencing, even if it’s bad, it is

some form of leading.

It’s not that all those who appear to be in the position of “followers”—all the citizens of Germany in 1930—must be sharing the goals or carrying forward the dictates of the leader—Hitler; however, some of them at least must do so willingly for his leadership to be effective. And in other contexts, it’s not that followers must always share all the specific goals that are defined by the leader in the sense that they would have independently chosen those goals. Sometimes people do share the goals, as on a desert island when everybody wants to be saved and everybody wants to survive; but think of my example in the book of a young worker in a Chinese factory in the twentieth century or an English millworker in the nineteenth who comes in from the farm in order to make money to send back to her family. She doesn’t care about making boots for people in London or sneakers for American teenagers. She cares about the money the factory will allow her to make to send home and so she’s a willing individual in following the foreman as a leader but it’s not as though she independently said, “Wow, what I really want to do with my life is make sneakers for somebody in Los Angeles.”

So that’s part of it. People may choose to participate because they see their own self-interest in following the goal the leader has set, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that they think wow, hunky-dory, that’s exactly what I want to do with my life. So that’s another way of thinking about the willingness factor here.

You wrote that one of the main responsibilities of a leader is to help followers develop their talents as leaders. In your experience, do you believe there are differences between men and women or between people in various cultures with the

commitment or interest as leaders toward helping followers develop their talents as leaders?

I’ll give you a guarded answer. It should be more likely that persons in certain cultures, cultures where nurturing is regarded as a good thing rather than strict, rigid hierarchy and authoritarian separation, will see nurturing as their appropriate responsibility. And it may well be that women, who are in many cultures taught to be more nurturing, might be more likely to engage in these activities. But, as you know from my chapter on gender, I basically would remind all of us that women are individuals and differ from one another just as much as men do. Some women are nurturing and some women are not. For example, Margaret Thatcher was anything but nurturing. And, she’s not alone in this. There are women who are just as tough and just as “take no prisoners” in their leadership styles as men and some men who are very good mentors and very nurturing of their followers as well. So it may be a matter of overlapping bell curves, where there may be more women who tend to be nurturing but that doesn’t mean that women are always nurturing and men are never nurturing and vice versa. I think it is, in the end, an individual thing which has at least as much to do with culture as it does with gender.

Your book discusses the influence of gender on how one uses power. Can you talk about this?

Right. Well as you know, I resist the idea that gender is always determinative of how you will be a leader, of how you will use power. I think it is one factor along with situation, along with training, along with experience of various kinds, along with the challenges you face, along with the type of organization. Gender does contribute to it in many

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instances but it can contribute in a number of ways. For example, again to refer to Margaret Thatcher; for her, gender was relevant, but it was mainly relevant as something to be avoided as a stereotype. She really didn’t want to be typecast as a woman leader. She wanted to be seen to be as at least as strong as any of the men in her cabinet. She was as tough as anybody and tougher than most. So for her, gender was relevant because people saw her as physically a female. Of course she couldn’t make that not true, but she was determined to have it be not relevant at all in terms of how she actually used power.

Yet for some women, gender may be more relevant in terms of how one uses power. If you’ve been brought up in a context where you are rewarded for being nurturing and supportive, you may well regard these as good and important attributes of your personality and helpful in almost any situation. It’s likely that you will bring them with you into a situation of leadership, but that certainly isn’t always true of women and particularly women in very top leadership posts.

When you have to make decisions about life and death for thousands

or millions of people, or really tough resource allocation decisions and decisions about hiring and firing people who are going to be contributing to the fortunes of a

nation, you don’t have a lot of time to think in a nurturing and supportive way. You can do it sometimes, on a day to day basis with people around you, but more often the organization and the situation and the demands of the job are going to dictate what you can do. Your rhetoric may be nurturing, your goals, and your hopes may be nurturing, but on a day to day basis, having power at the top of an enormous organization brings its own demands and is going to shape the behavior of a leader whether he or she is a woman or a man.

I agree with you on that. In fact, I’ve been quoted as saying that “everything is not always about gender.”

Exactly. It’s a fascinating dimension. Gender certainly needs to be better understood but it’s much too easy to regard it as determinative of everything.

I’ve conducted many interviews with women governors, women university presidents, and women

leaders in various sectors and from a variety of cultures. You made a statement in your book that supports one of my findings. You wrote, there is a “struggle that powerful female leaders admit they have throughout their journeys with insecurity and lack of confidence.” Do you think men struggle as much as women with that lack of confidence and insecurity and maybe just don’t talk about it?

Well there’s a good deal of evidence that women in our culture, and probably women in almost every culture, are less likely to have high self-confidence than men for a variety of reasons. We’ve been looking at that with undergraduate women even at very fine universities. So women in general, I think, find that their confidence isn’t necessarily encouraged as much by those around them as men. There are always exceptions, women who are regarded as being really strong and encouraged in everything they do, but more likely a man will have his confidence bolstered from the time he is a boy and a woman will find her life more complicated than that. One of the examples in my book is Katharine Graham the publisher of the Washington Post who was very open about her problems with lack of confidence. I would expect that there might be men who also have problems with insecurity and who don’t talk about it because it’s not supposed to be a male thing to do, to admit that you aren’t perfect or aren’t really strong and tough all the way through. I’ve known men, a few men at least, well enough to know that they can have some areas of insecurity about what they’re doing and are not as self-confident as they would like to be, but it’s much less likely that a man will talk about it, and that’s

I’m also aware—as increasingly all of us are

aware—that democracy is more complicated than it may first seem. It’s not simply a matter

of everybody having the vote, although that’s important. It’s also a question of how the

leaders behave, how the followers behave towards their leaders, what kinds of climate

these people find themselves in, in terms of resources internally and internationally.

Democracy is a form of organization that can allow people to flourish or it can lead

to demagoguery and violence and internal

strife.

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interesting in itself. I hadn’t thought about it, but it is more okay for a woman to admit that she has some problems with insecurity, I guess. On

the other hand, you might say, well some women would

die before they would admit it because they know it’s a stereotype about women. A lot of these things

are very complex about gender.

They definitely are. You spent quite a bit of time in one of your chapters on judgment. Why do you believe it is such an important topic to discuss? I think there are three reasons. First of all, I do believe what I said at the beginning of that section of the book, which is that judgment is the single most important quality that a leader brings to almost any situation. Being able to make quick decisions or thoughtful decisions about the aspects of a situation, to look around and see where the next threat or opportunity is coming from, to have a sense of timing and know when you should move and when you should hold on, make good judgments about the people that you want around you. There are just so many ways in which people either tend to come up right in such choices or blunder and make mistakes; and I do believe this is partly “natural.” I think of my own grandkids; some of them are naturally thoughtful and you would trust their judgment in a situation of crisis and others, who are equally wonderful and loveable and bright, just sort of wander around creatively all over the place and you wouldn’t trust their judgment in a crisis. So I think it’s partly natural and it’s partly learned but whatever combination it is, being able to make the kinds of choices, see the kinds of paths and pitfalls that good judgment allows you to do is, to me, an essential quality of leadership.

So the first reason I emphasize judgment is because I do see it as so central. The second reason is because it really is of particular interest to political theorists and, after all, one of my motives for writing the book was to discuss leadership from the perspective of a political philosopher. This is one topic within the leadership experience that political theorists have talked a lot about, from Aristotle to the present. Well, not a lot, that’s wrong, but at least some have touched on it. And, so that’s another reason why I wanted to get into it. Whether it was Aristotle or Hobbes or Hannah Arendt or Max Weber or whoever, they’ve said really interesting things.

I guess the final reason is because it’s a challenge. [Chuckle] It’s really hard to pin down what is going on when you’re exercising judgment and it’s also very hard to disentangle good judgment from good results. [Chuckle] We see the outcome that we like and we think, “Oh, that person must have had really good judgment,” but that cannot be exactly the same thing because there’s the matter of luck, there’s the matter of opportunity, there’s the matter of who else helped you, and so on. So there do have to be some distinctions between good judgment and good outcomes and this finally goes back to the point about assessing our leaders. One of the things we want to know in advance, if possible, is how good is their judgment? How likely are they to make the right call in an emergency, in a tough situation, in an unprecedented situation? Because we’re all going to rely a great deal on that.

You also discussed other important personal characteristics of leaders, and you did so in a very unique way. You focused on three pairs of words that, at a glance, seem to be opposites yet you presented them as

complementary. Tell us a little bit about these pairs of leadership characteristics and why you decided to focus on these three.

[Chuckle] That’s a very good question. Frankly, one reason I did it was as a writing device. Here I was writing a chapter on qualities that can be useful in leadership—and that chapter could have been a long book in itself—yet I was also trying to make the point that traits are not in themselves definitive of leadership in isolation. So I was trying to emphasize the importance of certain qualities or characteristics, but not make it sound as though all leaders have these traits. So it was a tricky chapter to write and I didn’t want it to take over the book. I had to decide which other kinds of qualifications I would spend time on, meaning there were also things I didn’t have time to discuss—stamina or a sense of humor, for instance.

And here, once again, I was guided by Max Weber. Two of my pairs are drawn from his wonderful essay, “Politics as a Vocation.” He talks about passion and proportion, and he says specifically these are two things that don’t always, and maybe not often, go together. A leader should be passionate about something and care deeply about it, but also have enough distance from it to make some reflective, careful judgments about it and not just follow your fanatical tendencies. And I think Weber is absolutely right about that. Leaders need to care about something and they cannot be in it simply for personal glory or making money or whatever the narrow selfish goal might be. You need to care about something to take on the work of a leader, and “passion” is a sort of shorthand for that, but you also need to have enough distance from the job, from the cause, from yourself, from other people, that you can make some fairly cool judgments instead

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13.

of just being carried along by your passion. That pair for Weber was an obvious set of complementary things that might seem opposites.

The first pair is pure Weber. In the second pair—empathy and detachment—I’m building on Weber. One of the things often said about leaders is they really need to be empathetic with the people that they’re leading. They need to care about the people. And, I agree with that, but I also believe you have to have some kind of detachment from the people that you’re leading. You cannot get so caught up in their personal woes and fortunes and pluses and minuses that you subordinate the good of the organization or the good of the association or the goals you’re trying to pursue to the personal needs or quirks of the individuals that you’re working with who are following you. So I think empathy is important, but detachment, another way of talking about proportion, is also important.

The last pair, courage and moderation, was my way of doing a kind of rhetorical flourish, of saying I’m going to talk about these pairs. And I did come to see that courage and moderation are often seen as opposites because courage is sort of brashly saying I’m going to move into the fray and moderation is sort of being balanced in all things. But when you think about it more deeply, courage can be exercised by people who are not boldly moving ahead but are showing the courage to stay put when everybody is trying to push them to take action. Courage can be taking a lonely stand when everybody else is losing their heads. Similarly, moderation is certainly different from the brash moving ahead but it has qualities of strength that we sometimes don’t notice. With your educational background, I suspect the chapter

on democracy may have been one of your most enjoyable chapters to write. I don’t believe there is much written specifically on making leadership compatible with democracy, so I found that chapter particularly fascinating. I chose to write the chapter about democracy because it is such an important dimension of our political experience today. There are so many people who say democracy is the best form of government. As Churchill says, all the other forms are worse. Today some people believe that democracy is going to take over the world, that it’s our responsibility to bring democracy to everyone. And, in many ways, I sympathize with that impulse, but I’m also aware—as increasingly all of us are aware—that democracy is more complicated than it may first seem. It’s not simply a matter of everybody having the vote, although that’s important. It’s also a question of how the leaders behave, how the followers behave towards their leaders, what kinds of climate these people find themselves in, in terms of resources internally and internationally. Democracy is a form of organization that can allow people to flourish or it can lead to demagoguery and violence and internal strife.

We have to recognize that there are consequences if we truly believe that members of a democracy are equal political citizens. Insofar as this is part of the definition of a democracy, that we all share in determining the political outcome with some degree of rough equality, then by definition, leadership is going to pose a tension within democracy. Leaders have more influence and they’re asked to accomplish more and make more powerful decisions. So it’s the tension between leadership and democracy—understood as requiring political equality—that really fascinated me. But I chose this

topic also because democracy is the dominant form of government of our time. In the past, it might have been more important to write about monarchy or aristocracy, if you lived in a society where those were the dominant forms of governments, but for us it’s democracy. So, I wanted to understand more about how leadership works in a democracy, both about how it supports democracy and how it may threaten democracy.

Did you have any major ahas while writing that chapter, or were these things you’ve been thinking about for years?

This was one of the most difficult chapters to write and my thinking evolved as I was writing it. I guess one of the most complicated parts was figuring out what it means “to rule and be ruled in turn,” which is another suggestive Aristotelian phrase. In other words, to say that in a healthy democracy somebody who becomes a leader and has the disproportionate power and influence that comes with that should only do so for a set period of time, and with limitations on the number of perquisites he can amass and pass on to his family.

But this means that there is a tension between some aspects of democracy and human nature. People like to hold onto power. People like to amass perks and pass them on to their kids. We see that happening all the time. So how do you create a framework in which the leaders will indeed take power and have influence, so that they can get the work of governing done effectively, but only for a period of time, and then go back to being an ordinary citizen? How do people move from being citizen followers, to beingleaders, and then back to being citizen followers, and doing

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that in sequence over the course of their lives and over the course of the government? If that could be accomplished, you wouldn’t have the problem with the tension between leadership and democracy. But, as I said, it’s difficult because that goes against the grain of human nature in many ways.

In chapter six, “How Do Character, Ethics and Leadership Interact,” you wrestled with issues between and among leadership, power, ethics, and character. You shared some great examples like Mandela and Lincoln, and also discussed the difficulty many leaders have in walking that line between having power and remaining ethical. Did some of the perspectives you share come from your own experiences? That’s a very thoughtful question. As a university president, I didn’t face a lot of issues that were threats to my morality, but there were certainly issues where I felt I had to make tradeoffs and had to choose the lesser of two evils. Not at the level that a president of a nation state might have to do. I never had to send anybody into war or create a situation in which some members of the community are giving up an enormous amount and others are gaining, but I did certainly face situations where there didn’t seem to be any single good outcome and every outcome came with

downsides as well as advantages. Some people would be more advantaged or satisfied with the answer than others, whichever side of the decision I came down

on in the end; that’s what it means to decide. You simply have

to try to find the best answer and move forward because you don’t have the option, as a leader, of just washing your hands and saying sorry I can’t make this decision.

Non-decisions are also decisions, in their own way.

Of course you don’t have this option in your daily life either. You have to make decisions. You have to take responsibility. But the word responsibility was the one that kept coming back to me again and again. The political leader’s responsibilities for his or her followers, for the good of the whole organization, are definitive of the kinds of challenges that come with ethical difficulties here. But in the same way, other people who have responsibilities for other human beings, whether it is parents or school superintendents or whatever, also have tougher choices than they might for themselves as individuals. One of my favorite examples is the very familiar one of the German citizen who was hiding a Jewish family in his house and when the Nazis come and knock on the door and he’s asked do you have any Jews here and he says no, at some level he’s performing an immoral act because he’s telling a lie, but most of us would say he’s doing the right thing because the costs of telling the truth are so much more profound. But he wouldn’t have had to make that kind of tough moral choice if he hadn’t had the responsibility for the Jews. So if you magnify that to the level of a nation

state, you’ve got responsibilities for so many different people and some of the responsibilities are actually in conflict because you can’t always achieve good things for everybody at the same time. So these are tough

decisions. It’s easy to dismiss them saying, well leaders have dirty hands because they make all these difficult ethical decisions, but you have to make the decisions, and at some level, your followers want you to do so, to protect them or advance their interests. And, there’s no way in which you can do it, and have it all come out smelling like roses.

My favorite example is Churchill with the French fleet. When France fell to the Nazis in 1940, Churchill had to make a

decision about whether to bomb the French fleet in Algiers. These ships were carrying thousands of sailors who had been the closest allies of the English only a week or so before, but since the French authorities refused to scuttle the ships or sail them to neutral waters, in the end he had to bomb those ships to prevent one of the largest fleets in the world from falling into German hands. That was a terrible decision. Churchill said that agonizing about that decision was the time in his life when he lost the most sleep. But he had to make a decision. That’s the kind of thing

14.

Judgment is the single most important quality that a leader brings to almost any situation. Being able to make quick decisions or

thoughtful decisions about the aspects of a situation... There are just so many ways in which people either tend to come up right in such

choices or blunder and make mistakes; and I

do believe this is partly “natural”.... It’s really

hard to pin down exactly what is going on when you’re exercising good judgment and it’s also

very hard to disentangle good judgment from

good results.

The Member Connector, International Leadership Association, www.ila-net.org, www.ILASpace.org (March 2011)

that leads people to say, well he’s immoral, he decided to bomb the French boats. But it would have been equally immoral, to let the French fleet become a part of the Nazi armament in the Mediterranean, threaten the dominance of the British Navy and the US Navy, and take many more lives of Allied soldiers and sailors. So political leaders, especially, have to make tough decisions that are larger in scope and sometimes more profound in their consequences than ordinary individuals face. And since these decisions are very rarely ones that can be made with an obvious optimal outcome for everybody, this leads so many people to think that leaders are often sort of dirty or immoral

I think that when a leader stops wrestling with those issues is the time you need to start worrying.

Yes. That’s absolutely true. For a leader who just thinks this is easy to do and goes to bed and sleeps well that night…. I think it was very important that Churchill found it agonizing.

You have many unique statements in your book that provide some great food for thought. For example, you wrote, “…but in the end, no leader can dwell too often on her deficiencies if she is to have the self-confidence and focus to get on with the work.” It seems to me that many leaders continue to focus more on fixing weaknesses than on strengthening and developing their talents and natural gifts. Yes. I’ve observed people and also I could find myself at certain points worrying about some problem, some aspects of my personality that I wished were different, but I realized that you just don’t have time to brood on things like that. You

do the best you can. To paraphrase a familiar saying, “You come to leadership with the character that you have.” You try to avoid having your character be perverted by some of the situations that you might face and if possible to be strengthened, but you can’t spend all your time bemoaning the facts. For example, if you’re not a particularly well organized person, even if you wish you were better organized, you’re not going to change your life in a fundamental way at the age of forty or fifty. So, you should recognize that you need a really good executive assistant or whatever it may be. Leaders of large organizations have so many things on their plates. They don’t have time to brood about things that they cannot change or second guess themselves in terms of going back over a decision they’ve made over and over again and thinking, well, maybe I should have made it differently. You just don’t have time to do that, and it takes energy away from the things you ought to be spending your life doing at that next stage.

Well said. Do you have any additional thoughts you would like to share as we wrap up?

We didn’t talk much about the relationships between leaders and followers, but one of the main points in the chapter on leaders and followers is the reciprocity of leaders and their closest subordinates or their closest lieutenants and how important this is to a leader. I think that’s an aspect of leadership that’s not sufficiently well studied. People talk about “the relationships” between leaders and followers as though all followers were alike. What I try to do is to look at it as a series of concentric circles so your relationships with the people who are closest to you, your vice-presidents, your deans, your closest

15.subordinates, your colleagues, are different from your “relationships,” I would actually use the term “connections,” with followers who are much more distant, the people who work in a factory in Nebraska when your headquarters is in New York, or whatever, people whom you may not ever meet. They are your followers. They are essential to the work, but your relationship or your connection with them is different.

So, the point for the people with whom you are closest, it’s not just “feedback” that you get from interacting with them or hearing about their views, it’s “dialogue.” In fact it’s what I, as a philosopher, would call “dialectic.” You build a better synthesis from having something you put forward be the thesis, having the reaction from other people be the antithesis and then working together to get a better answer than any of you could have gotten alone. So it’s not just a feedback loop. It’s more like a dialogue or dialectic where you get to a better and a different place through the conversation, through the answers, through assimilating the feedback and adjusting your behavior. And this relates to your question about what new insights I gained. I became much more sensitive to the subtle nuanced dimensions of the connections between leaders and their followers than I ever had before I wrote the book. I never spent much time thinking about that.

Excellent! Nan, thank you so much for your time and insightful responses.

I wish you all the best and I thank you again for some very interesting questions.

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ILA Members are doing amazing leadership work around the world, from starting new degree programs to nurturing young people who make a difference, from running innovative workshops and seminars to fostering organizational change.

Spotlight on ILA Members

NOLS Professional Training: Leadership Wilderness-StyleSpotlight on National Outdoor Leadership School:

What do a NASA astronaut and a high school freshman have in common?

More than you might think.

They are both graduates of the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), which means they share a similar experience of gaining the skills and knowledge that are necessary to live in a wilderness setting. Whether they are applying their learning to space travel or the JV soccer team, they also share a common framework for effective leadership and decision-making.

For over 45 years NOLS, a nonprofit founded in by legendary mountaineer Paul Petzoldt, has offered wilderness-based courses ranging from fourteen to ninety days in length in some of the most remote areas of the world. The environment and technical skills taught in each of these courses vary

from hiking in Patagonia to sea kayaking in Mexico’s Sea of Cortez to mountaineering in Washington’s North Cascades.

The commonalities in each course include high-quality

instruction, engaging classrooms, and a leadership model that is

applicable to all aspects of life.

In the last ten years, NOLS Professional Training—a department within the school that works with businesses, schools, and organizations to create customized wilderness and classroom courses—has led engaging leadership expeditions for a wide-range of clients including, among others, Google, the U.S. Naval Academy, Harvard Business School, Uganda Wildlife Authority Rangers, the Nature Conservancy, and, don’t forget, NASA!

NOLS has trained more than 130 NASA astronauts to date, including all six of the astronauts on the 39th Discovery flight to space (March 2011), who completed a NOLS course as part of their training.

Customized training courses are typically seven to thirty days in length with advanced curriculum in leadership, communication, and decision-making. NOLS Professional Training also offers short classroom-based courses that include simulation activities, coaching, and discussion.

Through years of working with a unique client group in beautiful wilderness classrooms, NOLS Professional Training has gained

expertise on the most effective ways to teach leadership to a variety of audiences.

NOLS Leadership Model: 4-7-1

Like many leadership models, the NOLS model came out of experience, application, and reflection. NOLS defines leadership as, “situationally appropriate action that directs or guides your group to set and achieve goals. Great leaders create an environment that inspires individuals and groups to achieve their full potential.” It is likely that the NASA astronaut and the high school freshman will receive a similar leadership curriculum, but NOLS Professional Training tailors the specifics to where they are in their leadership progression.

Seven Leadership SkillsSelf-Awareness: Can you correctly identify your own abilities and

16.

Four-time NOLS graduate John Grunsfeld shows his NOLS pride (see hat!) on a NASA

mission to the Hubble Telescope*

NOLS Outdoor Classroom*

The Member Connector, International Leadership Association, www.ila-net.org, www.ILASpace.org (March 2011)

17.emotions? Do you know how to pause an experience to determine what you are thinking, feeling, and seeking? Self-awareness is the foundation to all other aspects of leadership.

Communication: Taking PowerPoint and a podium out of the picture, can you effectively communicate a message or decision to a group of people? Can you facilitate discussion in a situation that holds both urgency and conflicting opinions?

Competence: On a NOLS course, competence relates to your ability to read a map, paddle a rapid, or climb a peak. In a professional setting it includes things such as conducting an excellent meeting, creating office systems that work, or properly training your staff.

Expedition Behavior: NOLS founder Paul Petzoldt, built his theory of leadership around the idea of “expedition behavior,” meaning acting in a way that is the most beneficial to the members of the team. An example from the field would be hiking a half-mile to fill up the group’s water dromedary after a long day of travel with a heavy pack. Hauling water in the office setting is a bit easier, but the attitude is transferable to any setting.

Tolerance for Adversity and Uncertainty: Have you ever slept out in a snow shelter in the middle of a blizzard and -30 degree F temperatures?

NOLS graduates have! Knowing how to face physical, mental, and emotional challenges with resilience can help any leader address the obstacles that will inevitably arise.

Judgment and Decision Making: “Rules are for fools,” said Paul Petzoldt. While many organizations might not be ready to adopt this mantra, it is important to develop judgment and

decision-making aptitude outside of policies and procedures.

Vision and Action: Do you have a vision for the future of your organization? Can you turn your ideas into action? Being able to make and enact appropriate action steps can take you from

an average employee to being an outstanding leader.

Four Leadership RolesEach of the seven skills can be used to effectively fulfill the roles identified below. This model suggests that any role within a group has the potential to be an aspect of leadership, and we encourage our students to engage in these ways:

Self-Leadership: Having the ability to take care of yourself and accomplish the tasks and decision-making necessary.

Active Follower: Participating in group discussion and decision-making in a way that is engaging and contributing to the goals of the group.

Peer Leadership: Think “influence.” Do you actively influence those around you in a positive way?

Designated Leader: This is the role we most commonly think of in relation to leadership. It means being the head architect and guardian of the group process, and with it comes authority through their position. However, it does not have to be the most important or most common form of leadership.

Signature StyleWhile each of the other categories of the NOLS Leadership Model is structured and contained by a definition, Signature Style refers to owning your unique leadership abilities and strengths. This allows individual personality to influence and inspire the group and organizational members.

How Can You Get Involved?

If you are interested in learning more about the courses and curriculum NOLS Professional Training offers, or interested in creating a course for your organization, please contact us at nolspro@nols.edu or 307.335.2220. www.nols.edu/nolspro

*Picture Credits: John Grunsfeld (NASA); Deborah Sussex (Outdoor Classroom);

Pascal Beauvais (Canoe); Ignacio Grez (Navigating)

The NOLS Leadership Model is focused on the intersection of roles, skills, and signature style

when dealing with any given situation.

(March 2011) The Member Connector, International Leadership Association, www.ila-net.org, www.ILASpace.org

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Member Discount to The LeaderShape Institute via ILA’s Partnership with LeaderShape

ILA Benefits Portfolio

With so many benefits available to ILA members, it is hard to keep track of them all! In this regular installment, we review member benefits in detail. This month, we look at ILA’s partnership with LeaderShape, which will be of special interest to leadership educators, student affairs professionals, and students.

As the global network for those who study, practice, and teach leadership, the ILA seeks to provide new learn-ing and development opportunities for members at all levels of familiar-ity with leadership, from the bud-ding student leader, to the intensely curious lay-person, to the veteran scholar. If these opportunities can benefit members professionally, as well as personally, while simultane-ously allowing us to share the gift of leadership learning with others, all the better!

In this spirit, the ILA is proud to announce a new partnership with LeaderShape, Inc. Through our closer cooperation, the ILA and Leader-Shape hope to share learning and development opportunities with each other’s members or alumni, respec-tively. Read on to learn more about this exciting new partnership and how you make take advantage of it.

More About LeaderShape

LeaderShape, Inc, a member of the ILA for more than ten years, is an international, not-for-profit organization com-mitted to developing young adults to lead with integrity.

LeaderShape’s flagship program is The LeaderShape Institute, an

intensive six-day experience for young adults aspiring to be lead-

ers. It is also operated in partnership with more than over seventy col-leges, universities, and other organi-zations across the country as well as internationally. The LeaderShape Institute is highly regarded as an

outstanding leadership development program and has been acknowledged as an exemplary program by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. More than 38,000 young adults have participat-ed in The LeaderShape Institute since 1986. You can learn more at www.leadershape.org.

In addition to The LeaderShape Insti-tute, LeaderShape also offers Cata-lyst, a powerful one-day program which institutions may bring to their campus for students to attend.

What’s In It For You?

By virtue of this partnership, Lead-erShape, Inc invites ILA members to attend a national session of The LeaderShape Institute program at a heavily discounted rate: 33% off full tuition, normally $1,475.00 (i.e., a discount to $500).

Through this offer, institutions have the opportunity to give more students the chance to attend this much-lauded leadership development program to learn essential leader-ship skills, engage deeply in critical self-reflection, and meet other aspir-ing leaders from across the country. If you, your department, or your institution is planning to send stu-dents to The LeaderShape Institute or advertise the program, we encourage you to take advantage of or advertise this new benefit of ILA membership. Essentially, for every two ILA student members you send to The Leader-Shape Institute, you send one more at no cost.

Applications are accepted on a rolling basis, so you still have time to take advantage of this offer for one of this year’s sessions. Learn more about The LeaderShape Institute or see a list of upcoming sessions.

For more information, about Lead-erShape, Inc or The LeaderShape Institute, you may wish to:

• Visitwww.leadershape.org• Read the brochure• Watch the video introduction • Or,contactthemdirectlyat lead@leadershape.org.

Take Advantage of ILA’s Partnership with Leadershape!

Receive a 33% discount to attend a Leadershape Institute.

To receive your 33% discount, simply call up Leadershape to register and let them know that you are a current ILA member.

If you have any questions about this opportunity or if you’d like to discuss a partnership with your organization, please contact Ashley Wollam, coordinator of membership & marketing, at 1.301.405.0804 or ajwollam@ila-net.org.

The Member Connector, International Leadership Association, www.ila-net.org, www.ILASpace.org (March 2011)

Listings

To view all announcements or to submit your own go to:

www.ila-net.org/LeadershipJobs/index.asp

Academic AdvisorAcademic Programs, University of Illinois, College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental SciencesUrbana, IL, USAClosing Date: 4/13/2011www.ila-net.org/LeadershipJobs/View_Job.asp?DBID=1323

Senior Public Service Leadership FacultyFanning Institute, The University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USAClosing Date: Until Filledwww.ila-net.org/LeadershipJobs/View_Job.asp?DBID=1322

Executive Director of the Oskin Leadership Institute at Widener UniversityWidener University, Chester, PA USA

Closing Date: Until Filledwww.ila-net.org/LeadershipJobs/View_Job.asp?DBID=1321

Program Director – Organizational LeadershipPsychology, Mansfield UniversityMansfield, PA USAClosing Date: Until Filledwww.ila-net.org/LeadershipJobs/View_Job.asp?DBID=1319

Director - Student Leadership and Civic EngagementStudent Leadership and Civic Engagement, Nova Southeastern UniversityFt. Lauderdale, FL, USAClosing Date: Until Filledwww.ila-net.org/LeadershipJobs/View_Job.asp?DBID=1318

Senior Scientist/Senior Staff ScientistEmployee Performance Enhancement and Growth , Human Resources Research OrganizationAlexandria, VA USAClosing Date: Until Filledwww.ila-net.org/LeadershipJobs/View_Job.asp?DBID=1317

Faculty Appointment in International Development – open rankSchool of Public Policy, University of Maryland, College ParkCollege Park, MD, USAClosing Date: Until Filledwww.ila-net.org/LeadershipJobs/View_Job.asp?DBID=1316

ILA Member Nina Harris recognized for ethical leadership development!

ILA Member Nina Harris was recognized for her work in ethical leadership

development with the 2011 Leadership Legacy Award at the annual National Black Student Leadership Development Conference

in January 2011. Congratulations Nina! Interested in learning more? Click here.

Community KioskShare your important announcements! Pin your virtual sticky note up on ILA’s Community Kiosk. Email Ashley Wollam at ajwollam@ila-net.org to submit.

Jossey-Bass On Leadership’s Book of the Week selects ILA Member’s book!

ILA Member and ILA Leadership Legacy Award recipient Manfred Kets De Vries’ book,

Reflections on Groups and Organizations, was selected as Jossey-Bass On Leadership’s Book of the Week, for the week of March 8, 2011.

Congratulations Manfred! Interested in learning more? Click here.

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(March 2011) The Member Connector, International Leadership Association, www.ila-net.org, www.ILASpace.org

2010

2011

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20112011

2010

Leadership Dates & EventsRecognized by the Washington Post for compiling a “comprehensive calendar of leadership seminars and events,” go online to see our complete listings of these & other events. Visit www.ila-net.org and navigate to Events --> Calendar. Submit your event to ila@ila-net.org. If you are attending these or other events & would like ILA materials to distribute, contact: ila@ila-net.org. Or, if you are interested in partnering on an upcoming event, please contact ILA Director Shelly Wilsey at swilsey@ila-net.org.

2011

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2011April 1116th Annual IBIMA Conference: Call for Papers Submission DeadlineKuala Lumpur, MALAYSIA

www.ibima.org

April 9Second Annual Women in Leadership ConferenceMarietta, OH, USACFP Deadline: Feb. 11, 2011

View Details

Society for Industrial & Organizational Psychology 2011 Chicago, IL, USA

www.siop.org/conferences/default.aspx

April 26Simmons Leadership ConferenceBoston, MA, USA

www.simmons.edu/leadership/

2011

April 29Chesapeake Bay Organization Development Network 2011 Silver Spring, MD, USA

cbodn.org/events?eventId=246141

2011

2011

April 13-16

May 12-13The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management: Revolutionizing the World of Work Washington, D.C., USA

View Details

May 18The Power of Framing: Challenging the Language

of Leadership, a Leadership Perspectives Webinar with Gail

Fairhurst, 12-1 PM EDTView Details

May 14-152011 Annual Roundtables of Leadership Research & Practice Virginia Beach, VA, USA

www.regent.edu/acad/global/conferences/gle/

May 25-27Academic Business World ConferenceNashville, TN, USA

abwic.org/

April 12-14Organisational Learning Knowledge & Capabilities Conf. (OLKC 2011)Hull University Business School, UKwww2.hull.ac.uk/hubs/olkc2011

April 30Gonzaga U & Seattle U 2011 Conference: Leadership for Global Peace and UnderstandingSeattle, WA, USAwww.seattleu.edu/coe/edlr/conference.aspx

April 29-30Academy of Religious Leadership Annual ConferenceChicago, IL, USA

www.arl-jrl.org/

May 18-20Hay Group International Conference 2011 Vienna, AUSTRIA

www.thehaygroupconference.com/default.aspx

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