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HBR Reading List: Leadership

Harvard Business Review is the leading destination for smart management thinking.

How do managers become extraordinary leaders? HBR editors have combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles on leadership and selected the most important ones to aid in this challenging transformation.

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• 01 May 2024
• What Do You Think?

Have You Had Enough?

James Heskett has been asking readers, “What do you think?” for 24 years on a wide variety of management topics. In this farewell column, Heskett reflects on the changing leadership landscape and thanks his readers for consistently weighing in over the years. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

• 26 Apr 2024

Deion Sanders' Prime Lessons for Leading a Team to Victory

The former star athlete known for flash uses unglamorous command-and-control methods to get results as a college football coach. Business leaders can learn 10 key lessons from the way 'Coach Prime' builds a culture of respect and discipline without micromanaging, says Hise Gibson.

• 26 Mar 2024
• Cold Call Podcast

How Do Great Leaders Overcome Adversity?

In the spring of 2021, Raymond Jefferson (MBA 2000) applied for a job in President Joseph Biden’s administration. Ten years earlier, false allegations were used to force him to resign from his prior US government position as assistant secretary of labor for veterans’ employment and training in the Department of Labor. Two employees had accused him of ethical violations in hiring and procurement decisions, including pressuring subordinates into extending contracts to his alleged personal associates. The Deputy Secretary of Labor gave Jefferson four hours to resign or be terminated. Jefferson filed a federal lawsuit against the US government to clear his name, which he pursued for eight years at the expense of his entire life savings. Why, after such a traumatic and debilitating experience, would Jefferson want to pursue a career in government again? Harvard Business School Senior Lecturer Anthony Mayo explores Jefferson’s personal and professional journey from upstate New York to West Point to the Obama administration, how he faced adversity at several junctures in his life, and how resilience and vulnerability shaped his leadership style in the case, "Raymond Jefferson: Trial by Fire."

• 24 Jan 2024

Why Boeing’s Problems with the 737 MAX Began More Than 25 Years Ago

Aggressive cost cutting and rocky leadership changes have eroded the culture at Boeing, a company once admired for its engineering rigor, says Bill George. What will it take to repair the reputational damage wrought by years of crises involving its 737 MAX?

• 02 Jan 2024

Do Boomerang CEOs Get a Bad Rap?

Several companies have brought back formerly successful CEOs in hopes of breathing new life into their organizations—with mixed results. But are we even measuring the boomerang CEOs' performance properly? asks James Heskett. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

• Research & Ideas

10 Trends to Watch in 2024

Employees may seek new approaches to balance, even as leaders consider whether to bring more teams back to offices or make hybrid work even more flexible. These are just a few trends that Harvard Business School faculty members will be following during a year when staffing, climate, and inclusion will likely remain top of mind.

• 12 Dec 2023

Can Sustainability Drive Innovation at Ferrari?

When Ferrari, the Italian luxury sports car manufacturer, committed to achieving carbon neutrality and to electrifying a large part of its car fleet, investors and employees applauded the new strategy. But among the company’s suppliers, the reaction was mixed. Many were nervous about how this shift would affect their bottom lines. Professor Raffaella Sadun and Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna discuss how Ferrari collaborated with suppliers to work toward achieving the company’s goal. They also explore how sustainability can be a catalyst for innovation in the case, “Ferrari: Shifting to Carbon Neutrality.” This episode was recorded live December 4, 2023 in front of a remote studio audience in the Live Online Classroom at Harvard Business School.

• 05 Dec 2023

Lessons in Decision-Making: Confident People Aren't Always Correct (Except When They Are)

A study of 70,000 decisions by Thomas Graeber and Benjamin Enke finds that self-assurance doesn't necessarily reflect skill. Shrewd decision-making often comes down to how well a person understands the limits of their knowledge. How can managers identify and elevate their best decision-makers?

• 21 Nov 2023

The Beauty Industry: Products for a Healthy Glow or a Compact for Harm?

Many cosmetics and skincare companies present an image of social consciousness and transformative potential, while profiting from insecurity and excluding broad swaths of people. Geoffrey Jones examines the unsightly reality of the beauty industry.

• 14 Nov 2023

Do We Underestimate the Importance of Generosity in Leadership?

Management experts applaud leaders who are, among other things, determined, humble, and frugal, but rarely consider whether they are generous. However, executives who share their time, talent, and ideas often give rise to legendary organizations. Does generosity merit further consideration? asks James Heskett. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

• 24 Oct 2023

From P.T. Barnum to Mary Kay: Lessons From 5 Leaders Who Changed the World

What do Steve Jobs and Sarah Breedlove have in common? Through a series of case studies, Robert Simons explores the unique qualities of visionary leaders and what today's managers can learn from their journeys.

• 06 Oct 2023

Yes, You Can Radically Change Your Organization in One Week

Skip the committees and the multi-year roadmap. With the right conditions, leaders can confront even complex organizational problems in one week. Frances Frei and Anne Morriss explain how in their book Move Fast and Fix Things.

• 26 Sep 2023

The PGA Tour and LIV Golf Merger: Competition vs. Cooperation

On June 9, 2022, the first LIV Golf event teed off outside of London. The new tour offered players larger prizes, more flexibility, and ambitions to attract new fans to the sport. Immediately following the official start of that tournament, the PGA Tour announced that all 17 PGA Tour players participating in the LIV Golf event were suspended and ineligible to compete in PGA Tour events. Tensions between the two golf entities continued to rise, as more players “defected” to LIV. Eventually LIV Golf filed an antitrust lawsuit accusing the PGA Tour of anticompetitive practices, and the Department of Justice launched an investigation. Then, in a dramatic turn of events, LIV Golf and the PGA Tour announced that they were merging. Harvard Business School assistant professor Alexander MacKay discusses the competitive, antitrust, and regulatory issues at stake and whether or not the PGA Tour took the right actions in response to LIV Golf’s entry in his case, “LIV Golf.”

• 01 Aug 2023

As Leaders, Why Do We Continue to Reward A, While Hoping for B?

Companies often encourage the bad behavior that executives publicly rebuke—usually in pursuit of short-term performance. What keeps leaders from truly aligning incentives and goals? asks James Heskett. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

• 05 Jul 2023

What Kind of Leader Are You? How Three Action Orientations Can Help You Meet the Moment

Executives who confront new challenges with old formulas often fail. The best leaders tailor their approach, recalibrating their "action orientation" to address the problem at hand, says Ryan Raffaelli. He details three action orientations and how leaders can harness them.

How Are Middle Managers Falling Down Most Often on Employee Inclusion?

Companies are struggling to retain employees from underrepresented groups, many of whom don't feel heard in the workplace. What do managers need to do to build truly inclusive teams? asks James Heskett. Open for comment; 0 Comments.

• 14 Jun 2023

Every Company Should Have These Leaders—or Develop Them if They Don't

Companies need T-shaped leaders, those who can share knowledge across the organization while focusing on their business units, but they should be a mix of visionaries and tacticians. Hise Gibson breaks down the nuances of each leader and how companies can cultivate this talent among their ranks.

Four Steps to Building the Psychological Safety That High-Performing Teams Need

Struggling to spark strategic risk-taking and creative thinking? In the post-pandemic workplace, teams need psychological safety more than ever, and a new analysis by Amy Edmondson highlights the best ways to nurture it.

• 31 May 2023

From Prison Cell to Nike’s C-Suite: The Journey of Larry Miller

VIDEO: Before leading one of the world’s largest brands, Nike executive Larry Miller served time in prison for murder. In this interview, Miller shares how education helped him escape a life of crime and why employers should give the formerly incarcerated a second chance. Inspired by a Harvard Business School case study.

• 23 May 2023

The Entrepreneurial Journey of China’s First Private Mental Health Hospital

The city of Wenzhou in southeastern China is home to the country’s largest privately owned mental health hospital group, the Wenzhou Kangning Hospital Co, Ltd. It’s an example of the extraordinary entrepreneurship happening in China’s healthcare space. But after its successful initial public offering (IPO), how will the hospital grow in the future? Harvard Professor of China Studies William C. Kirby highlights the challenges of China’s mental health sector and the means company founder Guan Weili employed to address them in his case, Wenzhou Kangning Hospital: Changing Mental Healthcare in China.

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The spring 2024 issue’s special report looks at how to take advantage of market opportunities in the digital space, and provides advice on building culture and friendships at work; maximizing the benefits of LLMs, corporate venture capital initiatives, and innovation contests; and scaling automation and digital health platform.

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The Hazards of Putting Ethics on Autopilot

Research shows that employees who are steered by digital nudges may lose some ethical competency. That has implications for how we use the new generation of AI assistants.

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The generative AI boom is unleashing its minions. Enterprise software vendors have rolled out legions of automated assistants that use large language model (LLM) technology, such as ChatGPT, to offer users helpful suggestions or to execute simple tasks. These so-called copilots and chatbots can increase productivity and automate tedious manual work. But if they are not thoughtfully implemented, they risk diminishing employees’ decision-making competency, especially when ethics are at stake.

Our examination of the consequences of “nudging” techniques, used by companies to influence employees or customers to take certain actions, has implications for organizations adopting the new generation of chatbots and automated assistants. Companies implementing generative AI agents are encouraged to tailor them to increase managerial control. Microsoft, which has made copilots available across its suite of productivity software, offers a tool that enterprises can customize, thus allowing them to more precisely steer employee behavior. Such tools will make it much easier for companies to essentially put nudging on steroids — and based on our research into the effects of nudging, that may over time diminish individuals’ own willingness and capacity to reflect on the ethical dimension of their decisions.

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AI-based nudges may be particularly persuasive, considering the emerging inclination among individuals to discount their own judgments in favor of what the technology suggests. At its most pronounced, this abdication of critical thinking can become a kind of techno-chauvinistic hubris , which discounts human cognition in favor of AI’s more powerful computational capacities. That’s why it will be particularly important to encourage employees to maintain a constructively critical perspective on AI output and for managers to pay attention to opportunities for what we call ethical boosting — behavioral interventions that utilize mindful reflection, as opposed to mindless reaction. This can help individuals grow in ethical competence, rather than allowing those cognitive skills to calcify.

Digital nudges, especially in the form of salient incentives and targets, can lead to subtle motivational displacement by obfuscating the ultimate aims of the team or organization and shifting proximal goals. When a performance measure becomes the main objective, it ceases to function as an effective measure, a phenomenon known as Goodhart’s law. For example, copilots might be designed to nudge customer-facing workers to maintain five-star ratings by offering bonus points or financial rewards.

About the Authors

Julian Friedland is an associate professor of business ethics at the College of Business, Metropolitan State University of Denver. David B. Balkin is professor emeritus of management at the Leeds School of Business in the University of Colorado Boulder. Kristian Ove R. Myrseth is a professor of management at the School for Business and Society at the University of York in England.

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Toxic culture is the norm at the FDIC, outside review cites 500 employee complaints

Scott Horsley

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chairman Martin Gruenberg apologized to employees Tuesday, after an outside review found a toxic workplace culture at the agency. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chairman Martin Gruenberg apologized to employees Tuesday, after an outside review found a toxic workplace culture at the agency.

An outside review of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation found a toxic workplace where hundreds of employees complained of sexual harassment, discrimination and other misconduct which went largely ignored by the agency's management.

The investigation was commissioned after a scathing report last fall in the Wall Street Journal, which documented strip club visits, lewd messages, heavy drinking and bullying at the government agency, which is responsible for safeguarding Americans' bank deposits.

TikTok challenges U.S. ban in court, calling it unconstitutional

The report found that "a patriarchal, insular, and risk-averse culture" at the FDIC allowed the misconduct to continue, and that complaints were discouraged by "a widespread fear of retaliation."

Culture 'starts at the top'

In a message to employees Tuesday, FDIC chairman Martin Gruenberg apologized to those who were harassed and mistreated, and he promised to implement the recommendations from the outside review. Those include an agencywide cultural transformation, efforts to protect victims and a push to hold leadership more accountable.

Authors of the report questioned, however, whether Gruenberg is the right person to bring about the necessary changes.

Biden decries surge of antisemitism since the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel

"While we do not find Chairman Gruenberg's conduct to be a root cause of the sexual harassment and discrimination in the agency," the report said, "as a number of FDIC employees put it in talking about Chairman Gruenberg, culture 'starts at the top.'"

Calls to resign

The report noted that Gruenberg has spent nearly two decades at the FDIC, including ten years as chairman, and that he has a reputation for losing his temper.

Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, called on Gruenberg to resign.

"The independent report released today details his inexcusable behavior and makes clear new leadership is needed," McHenry said in a statement . "Republicans will ensure Chair Gruenberg and other senior leaders at the FDIC are held accountable."

More than 500 FDIC employees contacted the law firm conducting the outside review to report misconduct at the agency.

Man admits racial harassment of Utah women's NCAA basketball team

The review found that bad actors were rarely punished, but instead simply transferred or even promoted.

"The FDIC's response to interpersonal misconduct is 'pay, promote, or move them,'" the report said.

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Court of Appeals to consider DA Fani Willis removal in Trump Georgia election case

The Georgia Court of Appeals on Wednesday decided to hear an appeal of a judge’s ruling allowing District Attorney Fani Willis to remain at the helm of Fulton County’s election interference case against former President Donald Trump.

The court’s decision almost certainly means a significant delay of a trial here for Trump and his 14 co-defendants and signals that Willis could still be disqualified from the case, the biggest in her career and one she spent years assembling. It is unclear how long the busy appeals court will take to decide the issue but it could stretch into 2025.

“There’s no way this case gets to trial this year,” said Atlanta defense attorney Andrew Fleischman, who is closing following the case. “I would expect the appeals court to issue its opinion some time next year.”

On March 29, Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee issued a “certificate of immediate review,” which allowed the defendants to appeal his ruling to the Georgia Court of Appeals before a trial begins.

Under appeals court rules, such a pretrial — or interlocutory — appeal is typically assigned to a three-judge screening panel. And all it takes is for one of those judges to decide whether the court accepts the appeal. The court’s order one-page order did not divulge which judge voted to grant the application. It gave the defense 10 days to file its formal notice of appeal.

In his order granting the pre-trial review, McAfee said he will continue working on the case, resolving pending motions, while the appeals court takes up the removal issue. It is possible Trump or his co-defendants could seek a stay from the appeals court barring McAfee from moving forward with his work on the case until the appeal is resolved.

Eight defendants, including Trump, requested permission to appeal a few days after McAfee effectively denied a motion to disqualify Willis due to her romantic relationship with then-special prosecutor Nathan Wade .

While McAfee ruled that Willis did not have an actual conflict of interest that warranted her removal, he said there was an appearance of a conflict that required her to make a choice. Willis could either recuse herself and her office from the case or cut ties with Wade, McAfee said. Within hours, Wade had tendered his resignation.

The Fulton DA’s office on Wednesday declined to comment.

Trump’s lead Atlanta lawyer, Steve Sadow, applauded the decision.

“President Trump looks forward to presenting interlocutory arguments to the Georgia Court of Appeals as to why the case should be dismissed and Fulton County DA Willis should be disqualified for her misconduct in this unjustified, unwarranted political persecution,” Sadow said.

Fleischman said he understood why the appellate court agreed to decide the disqualification challenge.

“This issue is important,” he said. “You’re prosecuting the former president of the United States. This is obviously an area of the law that needs clarification. ... It’s so important to the outcome of the case.”

Attorneys for Trump and eight co-defendants told the appeals court that McAfee erred in failing to disqualify Willis and that mistake should be resolved before the case goes to trial.

Credit: NYT

Wade’s resignation, they argued, did not cure the appearance of impropriety, which McAfee said in his ruling existed.

As a result, “neither the public nor the accused can have the required confidence in the impartiality and fairness of the criminal process,” they said.

The defense attorneys also contended Willis should have been removed for suggesting during a Jan. 14 speech at Big Bethel AME Church that the initial defense motion that criticized Willis’ relationship with Wade was racially motivated.

In response, the DA’s office said there was no basis for the appeals court to decide the issue. Prosecutors noted McAfee concluded the church speech did not “cross the line” and that the case is “too far removed from jury selection for any actual prejudice or improper effect on the jury pool to actualize.”

As for the relationship between Willis and Wade, the DA’s office noted Wade withdrew as special prosecutor shortly after McAfee issued his order. “Accordingly, the trial court properly exercised its discretion and inherent authority in denying the motion to disqualify based on an appearance of impropriety,” the DA said.

The exact timeline for when the court would take up the disqualification appeal is unclear.

Fulton Superior Court must first prepare the record from the first round of the removal fight and send it to the appeals court. Only then can the case be docketed and a panel of three judges randomly assigned via the court’s computer system, according to Christina Cooley Smith, deputy court administrator for the Court of Appeals.

It is then up to the judges to decide when they would like to hear oral argument, said Smith, but the matter must be decided within two terms of court. That means that if it’s docketed before July, it would need to be heard and decided before mid-March 2025.

The Fulton case is not the only criminal proceeding against Trump that is delayed.

U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon on Tuesday canceled the May 20 trial date that had been set for Trump’s classified documents trial in Florida. Her move indefinitely postponed the federal case, brought by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, and substantially raised the likelihood that it wouldn’t be tried before Election Day.

Credit: TNS

Smith’s other case against Trump, which focuses on the Republican’s attempts to cling to power in the aftermath of the 2020 election, has also been paused as the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether presidents should be immune for their actions while in office. Justices aren’t expected to announce their decision on the matter until late June, and based on their comments during last month’s oral arguments could instruct a lower court to take other action before Smith could move forward.

A third criminal trial, involving alleged hush money payments, is underway in Manhattan.

Separately on Wednesday, the Court of Appeals rejected an appeal from Harrison Floyd, one of Trump’s co-defendants in the Fulton election interference case.

Floyd has argued the case should be dismissed because the State Election Board – not Willis’ office – has exclusive authority to initiate and refer criminal investigations concerning elections. Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee rejected that argument in January and again in March .

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How Bad Leaders Get Worse over Time

A conversation with Harvard Kennedy School’s Barbara Kellerman on identifying and avoiding them.

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There’s plenty of advice on how to grow into a better leader. And it takes effort to become more effective. But bad leadership gets worse almost effortlessly, says Barbara Kellerman, a Center for Public Leadership Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School. She shares real examples from the public and private sectors of how bad leaders spiral downward, and how bad followership enables that negative trend. She gives her advice for recognizing and avoiding ineffective and unethical leaders. Kellerman is the author of the new book  Leadership from Bad to Worse: What Happens When Bad Festers .

CURT NICKISCH: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Curt Nickisch.

When Volkswagen appointed a CEO in 2007, that leader came in with a firm reputation. Martin Winterkorn was known for unbridled ambition and ruling with an iron fist. VW set the goal of becoming the number one carmaker in the world. Winterkorn wanted the German car company to beat Toyota and General Motors in units sold, profits, and customer satisfaction within ten years.

At first, there were big successes. But in 2015, a scandal broke: Emissionsgate. Volkwagen had created a so-called defeat device. It let its cars meet pollution regulations only when they were tested, not when they were on the road.

Now those few lines of software were not Martin Winterkorn’s idea. But his leadership was widely criticized for making them possible. Looking back, you can point to a weak company board, compliant employees, and an enabling culture. So if the signs were there, why did no one act on them?

That’s something today’s guest has researched. She says if you want good company leaders, one of the worst things you can do is tolerate bad ones. Because that can easily spiral and make things much worse.

Barbara Kellerman is a fellow at the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School, and she’s the author of the new book Leadership from Bad to Worse: What Happens When Bad Festers . Barbara, glad to have you on the show.

BARBARA KELLERMAN: My pleasure.

CURT NICKISCH: You write in the book, “Bad leadership is a social disease.” What makes you say that?

BARBARA KELLERMAN: Well, I have been interested in the question of how bad – bad leadership, and I might add bad followership – have persisted. So we are very good at attacking, trying to cope with physical diseases. We pour hundreds of millions into all of these every year and we pour hundreds of millions into mental diseases.

But for some reason we put up with bad leaderships, which is sometimes to say the obvious, extremely bad to the point of being evil, as if somehow we are completely incapable of tackling it. I compare it to a disease because it’s something that has forever plagued the human condition. It startles me that we put up with bad leadership, whether it’s in the workplace or in the body politic or in the military or in education, you name the domain, without having the slightest conception, virtually the slightest conception of how to stop or at least slow it.

CURT NICKISCH: We should define bad because I think when we say bad bosses or bad leaders, we immediately think we know what we’re talking about. But of course that can encompass so many different failures. How do you define bad when you think about bad leadership?

BARBARA KELLERMAN: I just wrote an article for a leadership journal about what has stopped us from taking on bad. And certainly one of the reasons is not only because bad is hard to define, but because of differences in values and opinions. So your definition of a bad leader could be my definition of a good leader.

But my overarching way of trying to acquaint audiences and students with what I mean is to have two simple axis. One of them is an axis from effective to ineffective. So very simply, along that axis, a leader is a good leader if he or she is effective and a leader is a bad leader if he or she is ineffective.

The other all-important axis, is the axis that is the continuum from ethical to unethical. So a leader is good if he or she is ethical, not to speak of being both ethical and effective. And a leader is bad if he or she is unethical, not to speak of being simultaneously unethical and ineffective.

CURT NICKISCH: So a good leader is ethical and effective?

BARBARA KELLERMAN: Exactly.

CURT NICKISCH: You have it in the title of your book that things go from bad to worse. You say that bad leadership can fester very easily if we don’t stop it and it doesn’t get better or rarely gets better. Its natural progression is to get worse. What did you see in your studies and research that tells you that?

BARBARA KELLERMAN: To me, it’s one of those things that’s so self-evident that it’s amazing we don’t act on it. But again, I think it’s a lot to do with… it’s not something we take seriously enough, as I said earlier. So I’m going to try to take a non-controversial example and simply point of Vladimir Putin.

Vladimir Putin has been in charge of Russia in one or another guise for over 20 years and the Vladimir Putin that we see in 2022, 2023, 2024, and I mentioned 2022 because that’s when he made the decision to invade Ukraine, is quite different from the Vladimir Putin that first took office in around the year 2000. He is a perfect exemplar of a leader who has gone from not so great to somewhat bad, certainly by the standards of an American liberal Democrat, to increasingly worse.

And now as we speak in 2024, worse in every possible way. Again, speaking from the perspective of a liberal Democrat, if by worse you mean oppressive and repressive both at home and abroad.

Bad leaders do not typically wake up one morning and say, “Golly gee, I’ve been bad. I need to change my ways.” They will stop being bad only if someone else or something else stops them. And if nothing stops them and no one stops them, they will go from bad to worse. I do talk about four stages or phases in my book, and I might add that the more time goes by and the worse they get, the more difficult they become to uproot.

CURT NICKISCH: You mentioned before that we are not very good at stopping bad leaders.. Are we bad at identifying it? Do we have bias against change? Do we feel powerless? I’m wondering what the reason is for the bad followership that you also talk about.

BARBARA KELLERMAN: So to your questions, Curt, the answers are yes, yes and yes, but your last word is one that I do want to pick up on. Leadership, it’s not a person, it’s a system. It’s a little bit more complicated than focusing only on the leader. So the system, what I call the leadership system, consists of three parts of equal importance.

Part one is the leader. Part two are the followers. You cannot have a leader without at least one follower. Part three, the contexts, plural, within which leaders and followers are situated. And you cannot tackle bad leadership unless you educate followers to, number one, the possibility that they might be able to do something about a bad leader. And then number two, provide followers with some tools for how they might go about doing this.

I never want to downplay how hard it is to uproot a bad leader, whether it’s in the workplace, whether it’s in the body politic, whether it’s in the military, whether it’s in a school. Upending bad leaders is often hard work and it is sometimes even quite risky. So I don’t want to make it seem easy to upend a bad leader. It is much more difficult to uproot a bad leader the longer we wait.

CURT NICKISCH: Well, let’s talk about the phases of bad leadership. You can end up with a catastrophic situation with a terrible leader. But as you make the point, it’s a progression. What are some of the early signs of bad leadership and ineffective leadership that you think followers should pay more attention to? And in this case that might be employees in a company, right?

BARBARA KELLERMAN: So stage one is watching out for a leader who seems to promise the moon and the stars. Every leader, especially when they take over, whether it’s in politics or in business or in the military or in a higher education, wherever, they promise changes and they promise that the changes they make will make things better.

But if you have a leader who seems to promise things that are almost fantastical, wildly ambitious, exceedingly ambitious, almost narcissistically ambitious, as if that was previous was bad and everything under their reign will be good, then I would argue that’s the initial warning sign.

Pay attention. If a leader promises you, as I said, the moon and the stars, if the promises seem unrealistic, almost fantastical, then I would say be alert, pay attention. I’m all for a leader being optimistic and determined and wanting to get to a better place, no question about it, that optimism is really, really important. But if it seems somewhat unrealistic, somewhat detached from reality, then I would be slightly suspicious.

CURT NICKISCH: And it’s interesting, promising the moon and the stars could be any entrepreneur nowadays, and it probably was in Elizabeth Holmes’s case, right? What other signs should followers look out for?

BARBARA KELLERMAN: Phase two is to acquire followers to expand and enlarge their base. But in this case, I’m talking about followers who seem to buy into that fantasy in an either excessively docile way or a way that at the other extreme is wildly enthusiastic and supportive.

In other words, the role of the follower, whether it’s, again, in the workplace or in a country or in any setting that we can possibly conceive of, is to be aware that leadership makes a difference and to be enlightened to the point of being willing to act if they see something or hear something that seems to them to be off base. So when you talk about the private sector, of Elon Musk’s board at Tesla, and you have the feeling that followers are so on board, so dedicated and devoted that they’ve reached the point of being largely, if not entirely uncritical, then you can assume that trouble might ensue.

So the nature of the followership, the size of the followership, if too many people are going along too uncritically, that’s phase two, then you could be running into trouble because there is no corrective that is being put in place. So phase one is promising the moon in the stars in ways that seem perhaps untethered to reality. And phase two, by promising such an abundance of good things, you acquire followers who are too often uncritical, unjudgmental, and conversely too enthusiastic about a leader who is promising things that cannot reasonably be attained without upending the system.

CURT NICKISCH: Let’s talk a little bit about exercising that control and recognizing that because it’s a judgment call, right? So do you have any recommendations for somebody who’s an employee at a company and they’re not sure if the leader is out of touch or just really ambitious and that could be a good thing?

BARBARA KELLERMAN: Absolutely. I think maybe implicitly you’re talking about tech entrepreneurs who often are visionaries and are seeing futures that the rest of us absolutely cannot, and how do we distinguish between the fantasist and the person who really is just able to have some kind of a vision that will lead to some kind of splendid outcome.

I would simply point out, Curt, that many of the tech visionaries grounded their early language in a global morality that turned out in relatively short order to be completely untrue. So if you go back to the young Mark Zuckerberg or you go back to the young Steve Jobs, or you go back to the young Larry Page, or you go back to even younger than he is now, Sam Altman. In every one of these cases, it wasn’t just about the technology per se, it was about persuading us, the public at large, but also persuading employees who then in many, many, many cases, as I do not have to tell you, became later wildly disenchanted; It is not uncommon for the technologies to evolve in ways that seem not just not in line with the original moral vision, but indeed the antithesis of it.

CURT NICKISCH: So that’s one, you might want to pay extra attention to that. Most people maybe vote with their feet, they leave the company if they feel like it’s not going somewhere. What can you do in that situation as an employee to maybe better suss out whether or not you have a good leader at the helm taking you into the future or a bad leader at the helm taking you the wrong direction?

BARBARA KELLERMAN: You know, anytime you talk about leadership and followership, you’re certainly not talking in exact science here by any stretch of the imagination. But I do talk about certain things that you can do. You know, so much of this is about, and I’m going to use a phrase that became popular first in the sixties and probably much more in the seventies and into the early eighties in the women’s movement, which has to do with consciousness. The phrase is consciousness raising, which is just being aware. Most of us go to work and we don’t think a lot about the mission of the organization that we’re a part of, and we don’t think a lot about the moral quality of the leadership of the organization.

So I think much of it is simply what I’m trying to do is consciousness raising. Pay attention, watch for the signals. Do not assume that what happened in 2022 is going to be the same thing that’s happening in 2024 or 2026. So it’s a lot about paying attention. And then if you start to become persuaded that something may not be going as well as you think, speak up and speak out. Do not be afraid to speak truth to power. But be aware, as I earlier said, of the risks that are involved and do so intelligently, which generally means don’t go out on a limb alone, try to work with other people, see if you have allies in the organization who are willing to speak up.

But you and I both know that there are plenty of people in virtually every – and I’ll go back to the tech companies who started mainly because they’ve evolved so quickly, who have worked at places like Meta and Google Alphabet and who started off thinking they were on the side of the angels only to realize in a certain amount of time that theirs was a business like any other, theirs was a profit-making enterprise like any other. And that if harm had to be done in order to increase profits, by and large people were not giving it a second thought. Some of these moral issues are actually quite profound.

CURT NICKISCH: I wonder, I don’t know, if you are advising a student or if you’re advising somebody in your family who’s taking a new job. Are there questions you think they should ask during the interview process? Wuestions that you think they should ask their manager as they go along to try to raise their consciousness. They want to be aware, but what are some of your favorite ways to do that in a safe way as they’re getting rolling and building up their confidence with it?

BARBARA KELLERMAN: I think it’s a great question because most people who are in the position of applying for a job and then getting the job are often so happy to get the job that they don’t ask the larger questions about the organization that, apparently, because they’re applying for the job in the first place, they’re eager to join. But I think looking at past performance, not just in terms of efficacy and efficiency, but in terms of morality, I’m going to go back to the two axis of what is not only a good leader and a good follower, but also a good place to work.

One is, is the place of potential employee effectively doing what it says it is intent on doing what its purpose is? And the other is the ledger of morality. Do I feel that this is a place based on past performance precisely because we’re unable to predict the future – but based on past performance, do I feel this is a place to which I could be not just professionally committed, but personally committed in that I believe not only in the mission of the company, but I believe that the mission is being adhered to as opposed to neglected, that the words have some meaning behind them?

So I would say that perhaps the best thing you can do is to be alert to the kinds of issues that you and I have been talking about, but then also to look at past performance. So a combination of consciousness raising, being aware of the concerns that you might have about performance, whether it’s personal, professional, ethical, efficacy, being aware of it. Number one, being aware. Number two, looking at past performance as some kind of indicator of future performance.

CURT NICKISCH: And then that’s a baseline that you work from when you’re in that job and you see things change or you see things that come up?

BARBARA KELLERMAN: Yeah, it depends. We all have many things that motivate us, Curt, as I don’t have to tell you, and I don’t underestimate the power of money, I don’t underestimate the power of safety and security. I have no doubt that many listeners are working in places that they wish could in some ways be different. And we all do our own personal and professional cost and benefit analyses to calculate when it’s worth saying something, when it’s worth protesting, when it’s worth even quitting.

CURT NICKISCH: Barbara, thanks so much for giving us some food for thought and some tools to make a difference when we choose to do so. I really appreciate you talking about this on the show.

BARBARA KELLERMAN: Thanks very much for the conversation. Appreciate it.

CURT NICKISCH: That’s Barbara Kellerman, fellow at the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and author of the new book, Leadership From Bad to Worse: What Happens When Bad Festers.

And we have nearly 1000 more episodes plus more podcasts to help you manage your team, your organization, and your career. Find them at hbr.org/podcasts or search HBR in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Thanks to our team: Senior Producer Mary Dooe, Associate Producer Hannah Bates, Audio Product Manager Ian Fox, and Senior Production Specialist Rob Eckhardt. Thank you for listening to the HBR IdeaCast . We have a special series episode for you on Thursday, and we’ll be back with a regular episode on Tuesday. I’m Curt Nickisch.

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