Harvard Business Review Q&A: The Dark Side of Leadership

Computerworld - To lead is to live dangerously, and leaders who ignore the danger can find themselves taken down, write Ronald A. Heifetz and Marty Linsky in this month's issue of the Harvard Business Review. The authors, who teach leadership at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, adapted the article from their new book, Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading (Harvard Business School Press, 2002).

Heifetz talked with Computerworld's Kathleen Melymuka about the perils of steering your organization through change.

Q: What's the "dark side" of leadership?

A: It's the danger, and the danger is a product of the real or feared losses that frequently accompany change.

Q: So to the extent that I champion change, I'm in danger?

Ronald A. Heifetz is an author and teaches at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Depending on how proud they are of their competence and how much learning they may need to do to develop new competence, they may fight quite ferociously against the validity of your initiative—and frequently in ways that will endanger your efforts and you personally.

Q: What do you mean endanger me personally?

A: Rarely do I mean physical danger, though on occasions we have seen someone go berserk. In the vast majority of situations, the dangers are to one's reputation, career or institutional credibility.

Q: Where does this danger come from?

A: You can find yourself "marginalized"—suddenly no longer in the loop, and people are not asking for your opinion. There's out-and-out attack. People can begin to take you on face to face in meetings in a way that reduces your credibility. Or your own people may seduce you by pushing you out on a limb to champion their perspectives without appreciating how much interference you're going to run into.

	This is the latest in a series of monthly discussions with authors of articles in the Harvard Business Review on topics of interest to IT managers.

Or people will divert you from the tough issues. In IT, they may have you focus on the technical dimensions rather than the adaptive dimensions of the change IT is implementing.