Yale Daily: http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/19812
In a society that demands success, how do fallen leaders — like homemaking guru Martha Stewart — rebuild their careers?
Yale School of Management professor and Associate Dean Jeff Sonnenfeld may have the answer.
This is the essential question that Sonnenfeld discusses in his
new book “Firing Back: How Great Leaders Rebound After Career
Disasters,” which came out on Feb. 1. With co-author Andrew Ward of the
University of Georgia, Sonnenfeld offers advice for leaders of all
kinds about how to move on after significant failure or “adversity” in
their careers.
Sonnenfeld, whose expertise in leadership has made him perhaps
SOM’s most visible figure in the national media, founded SOM’s Chief
Executive Leadership Institute, which conducts research on leadership
and hosts educational conferences for corporate executives. Sonnenfeld
said he was inspired to write the book through his interactions with
such industry leaders as Stewart and Donald Trump in
Institute-sponsored workshops for CEOs.
“There’s a certain kind of intimacy these global titans will
share,” he said, in references to the conferences he participated in
with these leaders.
Another impetus for the book, Sonnenfeld said, was a two-page
summary he wrote in a prior publication examining top corporate
leaders, many of whom held a “folk-heroic” status within their
companies. Reading literature on heroism by sociologist Joseph Campbell
and psychologist Otto Rank, he said, helped him relate to the career
cycles of leaders who achieve almost mythic stature in their firm but
then suffer calamitous failure.
Sonnenfeld said failure remains a taboo subject in a
“success-absorbed” society, something he wanted to remedy in “Firing
Back.” The book is packed with case studies, statistical evidence and
anecdotes of leaders as diverse as Stewart, Home Depot Founder Bernie
Marcus and former U.S. president Jimmy Carter.
The book proposes specific methods of recuperation, emphasizing
the proactive nature of recovering leadership rather than the avoidance
or acceptance of hardship. Overall, Sonnenfeld and Ward propose five
essential components of the recovery process: “Fight not Flight,”
“Recruit Others into Battle,” “Rebuild Heroic Stature,” “Prove your
Heroic Mettle,” and “Discover a New Heroic Mission.”
The book relies heavily on anecdotes from the corporate world
as evidence. In one section, after relating the early career
difficulties of billionaire businessman Michael Bloomberg — now the
mayor of New York City — the authors argue for aggressively
re-establishing a positive life ethos.
“When a catastrophic setback occurs that forcibly separates
them from that mission, perhaps the biggest challenge is to redefine
their mission, and in so doing, essentially redefine their being,”
Sonnenfeld and Ward write.
The book has already received positive reviews from
publications like the Financial Times and the New York Times. Robert
Sternberg ’72, dean of arts and sciences at Tufts University and former
professor of psychology at Yale, who has read the book, said he is not
surprised by the positive reaction. The book’s subject of recovering
from obstacles lends itself to a much wider audience than traditional
management literature, he said.
“I think it’s terrific,” he said. “I think it will have a great impact, and it’s not only for people in business.”
Although most reviews of “Firing Back” have been positive,
Financial Times reviewer Morgan Witzel wrote that it overemphasized the
notion of heroism in evaluating leaders.
“There is perhaps a little too much use of the word ‘heroic’ in
this book, too much concentration on stature and greatness,” Witzel
wrote.
While many of them haven’t read the book yet, Sonnenfeld’s
students at SOM praised his writing acumen and immense knowledge in the
field of leadership. Spencer Hutchins MBA ’07, who is currently taking
Sonnenfeld’s class “Strategic Leadership Across Sectors,” said the
course’s required reading includes some of the professor’s earlier
works, which Hutchins appreciates for their straightforward yet
cerebral approach.
“I think he has a great way of writing in English but not dumbing down the material,” Hutchins said.
Sonnenfeld is the author of eight previous books, including “The Hero’s Farewell: What Happens When CEOs Retire.”
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发表于 2007-2-23 13:04:00
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