A seeker of what makes leaders tick: one of the most renowned tracers of the 'DNA of leadership' has written his memoir of a life spent as a leader and studying leaders in action.

• Author: Bennis, Warren
• Position: LEADERSHIP - Interview - Reprint

FOR THE LAST THREE DECADES I have taught at the University of Southern California. Not long before coming to USC, I received a $100,000 grant from the Ralph Corbett Foundation to use in any way I chose. I decided to research and write a book on leadership.

Even as I was settling in at USC, I began to see that certain themes recurred throughout my work--the nature of leadership, the importance of creative collaboration, how organizations and other groups work, how to effect change, the need to reinvent oneself periodically, and how to create cultures of candor. I decided to start on my book by interviewing leaders in the area, in part because it would allow me to learn the local power structure, not easy to do in a sprawling, diverse metropolitan area of more than 8 million people. Ultimately, the book project gave me an opportunity to spend time with leaders throughout the country, sometimes spending days with them, asking questions about their leadership styles.

For the book that became Leaders: Strategies for Taking Charge, coauthored by Burt Nanus, I interviewed some 90 people, two-thirds of them the heads of major corporations, the rest successful entrepreneurs. My sources ranged from Johnson & Johnson CEO James Burke, fresh from his inspired handling of the Tylenol-tampering crisis in 1982, to Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham, from Urban League head Vernon Jordan to fashion designer and entrepreneur Liz Claiborne.

Most of the leaders I spoke to had sharp, nuanced insights into the skills and attributes that allow a person to engage others. Bill Gore, the creator of Gore-Tex, gave me a glimpse of the restless soul of the entrepreneur. Gore left an excellent job at DuPont and struck out on his own because the chemical behemoth couldn't see the potential of the extraordinary material he had developed. Entrepreneurs fear boredom more than chaos. They become anxious when things are too stable, and often abandon the familiar for the risky. Gore was as inventive in organizing his company as he was in the laboratory. His plants never employed more than 250 people at a time. A larger group, Gore believed, couldn't function as a genuine community, which is what he wanted his factories to be.

After the interviews were completed, Burt and I studied them for months, looking for patterns in the data, trying to identify the characteristics and strategies successful leaders had in common. Our most unexpected and least useful discovery: almost every one of our leaders was married to his or her original spouse.

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Leaders was unusual among business books of the period in focusing on a wide variety of leaders. Traditionally, people curious about leadership looked to the heroic biographies of Roosevelt, Churchill, and other iconic figures. Burt and I had something else in mind--a longitudinal study that might help a reader develop his or her own leadership skills. We identified the qualities and behaviors that allow someone to succeed in a leadership role. Among the essential traits we identified were empathy, respect, and insight in dealing with others. I called that ability emotional wisdom. To our delight, the book, published in 1985, got good reviews and sold well.

Shapers of our destinies

In my bones, I knew how important leadership was and is. The very quality of our lives depends on it. We need and seek honest, competent leaders in every area of our lives--government, the workplace, social organizations, schools. We are social animals, and our packs need leaders. Good or bad, they shape our destinies. Sensing that leadership is something many people aspire to, whatever role they actually play, I decided to write another book on the subject. But this time I wanted to study an even more varied group and write the book in my own voice, not a shared one. Because authentic leadership elevates whatever institution it is practiced in, I wanted to include social innovators and...