Understanding Leadership

www.hbr.org

BEST

Effective leaders take a

personal interest in the longterm development of their

employees, and they use tact

and other social skills to

encourage employees to

achieve their best. It isn’t

about being “nice” or

“understanding”—it’s about

tapping into individual

motivations in the interest of

furthering an

organizationwide goal.

OF

H BR 1961

Understanding

Leadership

by W.C.H. Prentice

Reprint R0401K

Effective leaders take a personal interest in the long-term

development of their employees, and they use tact and other social

skills to encourage employees to achieve their best. It isn’t about being

“nice” or “understanding”—it’s about tapping into individual

motivations in the interest of furthering an organizationwide goal.

BEST OF HBR 1961

Understanding

Leadership

by W.C.H. Prentice

COPYRIGHT © 2003 HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PUBLISHING CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Although the more recent work of authors such

as Abraham Zaleznik and Daniel Goleman has

fundamentally changed the way we look at leadership, many of their themes were foreshadowed

in W.C.H. Prentice’s 1961 article rejecting the notion of leadership as the exercise of power and

force or the possession of extraordinary analytical skill. Prentice defined leadership as “the accomplishment of a goal through the direction of

human assistants” and a successful leader as one

who can understand people’s motivations and

enlist employee participation in a way that marries individual needs and interests to the group’s

purpose. He called for democratic leadership

that gives employees opportunities to learn and

grow—without creating anarchy. While his language in some passages is dated, Prentice’s observations on how leaders can motivate employees to support the organization’s goals are

timeless, and they were remarkably prescient.

Attempts to analyze leadership tend to fail because the would-be analyst misconceives his

task. He...