The making of a stellar president
What makes a high-impact leader? Do the times make the person, or does the person make the times? Those questions have been on many voters’ minds as the presidential election nears. Gautam Mukunda, an assistant professor of business administration at Harvard Business School (HBS), set out to answer them. In his new book, “Indispensable: When Leaders Really Matter,” Mukunda attempts to determine what made influential leaders from Abraham Lincoln to Adolf Hitler, from good to bad, any different from others who might have held their jobs. The answer, he writes, depends in large part on how those leaders came to power. Companies and countries that aggressively root out those who don’t conform to the prevailing system may be able to select competent leaders, he argues, but they’ll rarely select a leader who’s truly transformative. For all their differences, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney share an important quality: their outsider status as candidates largely unfiltered...