HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PROFESSOR EXAMINES LEADERSHIP CHALLENGES THROUGH THE LENS OF FICTION
Joseph Badaracco Draws on Popular MBA Course
|
| Professor Joseph Badaracco |
BOSTON - The hardest tests for business leaders often challenge their character as much as their skills. Leaders can grow by meeting these challenges – but only if they ask difficult questions about themselves. In his new book, Questions of Character: Illuminating the Heart of Leadership through Literature (Harvard Business School Press), Harvard Business School Professor Joseph Badaracco asserts that self knowledge is the critical factor in character – “the big engine that drives performance” – because good leaders know who they are.
Badaracco believes that literature can help leaders develop personal answers to specific questions by providing fresh, powerful perspectives on the fundamental dilemmas facing today’s managers and executives. In Questions of Character, he draws on the popular Harvard MBA course that he has taught for the past ten years, in which students read novels, plays, and short stories instead of case studies.
The book highlights eight works – each of which raises a vital question on a particular aspect of character. These works not only cast a strong light on the recurring tests faced by men and women in positions of responsibility, but they challenge readers to examine their own traits by asking questions of themselves that have confronted compelling fictional characters:
- Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Do I have a good dream? Do my deepest aspirations impel me forward through hardships, and do they engage others’ aspirations and dreams?
- Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. How flexible is my moral code? Will my moral code help me make the right decisions for my organization, even as business conditions change?
- Allan Gurganu’s “Blessed Assurance: A Moral Tale.” Do I have unsettling role models? Do my role models provoke me as well as embody values I can emulate?
- F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon. Do I really care? Do I have the patience, courage, and tenacity that leadership requires?
- Joseph Conrad’s “The Secret Sharer.” Am I ready to take responsibility? Can I set clear performance standards for myself and others – and follow through on them?
- Louis Auchincloss’s I Come as a Thief. Can I resist the flow of success? Do I recognize the hidden hazards of success and the ways to avoid them?
- Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons. How well do I combine principles and pragmatism? Can I make the difficult trade-offs needed to run my unit or business?
- Sophocles’ Antigone. What is sound reflection? Do I think through high-stakes decisions adequately despite relentless pressure on my time?
About the Author
Joseph L. Badaracco, Jr., is the John Shad Professor of Business Ethics at Harvard Business School, where he teaches courses on business ethics, strategy, and management in the School’s MBA and Executive Education programs. He is a graduate of St. Louis University, Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes scholar, and Harvard Business School, where he earned an MBA and a doctorate in business administration. In addition to Questions of Character, Badaracco has written three other books focused on leadership and individual decision making: Business Ethics: Roles and Responsibilities, Defining Moments: When Managers Must Choose between Right and Right, and Leading Quietly: An Unorthodox Guide to Doing the Right Thing.
About Harvard Business School
Founded in 1908 as part of Harvard University, Harvard Business School (www.hbs.edu) is located on a 40-acre campus in Boston. Its faculty of more than 200 offers full-time programs leading to the MBA and doctoral degrees, as well as more than 40 Executive Education programs. For almost a century, HBS faculty have drawn on their research, their experience in working with organizations worldwide, and their passion for teaching to educate leaders who have shaped the practice of business around the globe.