CommerceUVA Fall 2007 (Investors' Report) - McIntire School of ...

LESSONS IN
LEADERSHIP
12 • CommerceUVa
McIntire professors take a hard look at what leadership really means.
ant to improve your leadership skills? head to your local
bookstore and you’ll find shelf after shelf of leadership “how-to” manuals,
filled with solemn promises to help you change your life—sometimes in
less than an hour—with the help of just a handful of devastatingly simple
principles. everyone, it seems, from rudy Giuliani to Cal ripken to (this is
not a joke) santa Claus, seems to have some indispensable insight to of-
fer about how you can unleash your inner Winston Churchill.
is any of this advice any good? “there’s a lot of crazy stuff out there,”
says mcintire professor amanda Cowen, who has helped train leaders at
harvard Business school, as well as at harvard’s kennedy school of Gov-
ernment. Cowen, who joined mcintire in July 2007, began teaching topics
in organizational behavior this fall as part of the third-year integrated
Core experience (iCe). “if we really want to understand what leadership is
all about,” she says, “we have to think much more deeply about it.”
Cowen takes what is known as a “contingency” view of leadership.
this perspective holds that—contrary to popular belief—leadership isn’t
the domain of a charmed few, who are destined from birth for greatness.