Despite What Harvard Says, You Don’t Need a Crucible

June 20, 2016 by Joshua
in Education, Inc.com, Leadership

My Inc.com post, “Despite What Harvard Says, You Don’t Need a Crucible” begins

Despite What Harvard Says, You Don’t Need a Crucible

While some have become leaders by overcoming great challenges, don’t believe the myth that you need to.

In September 2002, Warren Bennis and Robert Thomas wrote in Harvard Business Review‘s, Crucibles of Leadership,

In interviewing more than 40 top leaders in business and the public sector over the past three years, we were surprised to find that all of them–young and old–were able to point to intense, often traumatic, always unplanned experiences that had transformed them and had become the sources of their distinctive leadership abilities.

We came to call the experiences that shape leaders “crucibles,” after the vessels medieval alchemists used in their attempts to turn base metals into gold.

Harvard Business Review includes the article in its book, 10 Must-Reads on Leadership (though a search will find it online).

I came to wonder

Do I need to endure a crucible to become a great leader?

Read more at “Despite What Harvard Says, You Don’t Need a Crucible

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