Getting the word out about learning from experience — and failure
Ronald Heifetz, co-founder of the Center for Public Leadership and King Hussein bin Talal Senior Lecturer in Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), uses experiential teaching methods like student case analysis — in which students develop and collaboratively analyze cases drawn from their own work experiences of failure — to promote deeper engagement and stronger retention of leadership concepts. Teaching leading as practice in “Exercising Leadership: The Politics of Change” and “Leadership from the Inside Out: The Personal Capacity to Lead and Stay Alive” requires not only learning a complex conceptual framework, according to Heifetz, but also skills, temperament, and values. He believes that analyzing personal experiences, far more than probing “case-method” examples, has several advantages. The process meets students at their learning frontier because they self-select salient cases; makes the lessons come alive in an enduring way; strengthens the emotional capacity for reflective practice; and increases the likelihood that knowledge...