Thinking about Leadership This page intentionally left blank Thinking about Leadership Nannerl O. Keohane Princeton University Press • Princeton and Oxford Copyright © 2010 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Keohane, Nannerl O., 1940– Thinking about leadership / Nannerl O. Keohane. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-691-14207-4 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Political leadership. I. Title. JC330.3.K46 2010 303.3'4—dc22 2010022315 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available Book design by Marcella Engel Roberts This book has been composed in Sabon Lt Std Printed on acid-free paper. ∞ press.princeton.edu Printed in the United States of America 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 For Robert O. Keohane This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface ix Introduction 1 OnE What Is Leadership? 18 TWO How and Why Do Followers Matter? 48 THREE What Determines Who Becomes a Leader and Which Leaders Will Succeed? 83 FOUR Does Gender Make a Difference? 121 FIVE How Does Leadership Work in a Democracy? 155 SIX How Do Character, Ethics, and Leadership Interact? 194 Conclusion 224 viii  •  CONTENTS Notes 237 Bibliography 267 Index 283 Preface THE bOOk HaS ITS origins in a lecture presented at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in February 2005. I am grateful to colleagues who invit- ed me to give the lecture and thus launched me on this adven- ture. A revised version of that lecture was published in Perspec- tives on Politics 3, no. 4 (December 2005): 705–22. Cambridge University Press has graciously allowed me to use several para- graphs from that essay. Chapter 3 is a much-revised version of “Crossing the Bridge: Reflections on Women and Leadership,” presented to a conference at the Kennedy School in 2006 and published in Women and Leadership: The State of Play and Strategies for Change, edited by Barbara Kellerman and Debo- rah L. Rhode (Jossey-Bass 2007). I am grateful for permission to use some passages from that essay. In this book, I bring together two types of experience: my work as a leader in higher education over almost three decades and my training, teaching, and research as a political philoso- pher. As president of Wellesley College from 1981 until 1993 and of Duke University from 1993 until 2004, I had the re- sponsibility of presiding over two fine institutions of higher edu- cation. Through my service on boards of directors over these decades, I have observed leaders in other areas as well, from multinational corporations IBM and State Street Boston and