If I fouled out in a basketball game, I blocked it from my thoughts. I heard this line at school so many times I mocked it. If you were playing intramural soccer, or if you were making a cheeseburger, or if you were cutting the grass, his theory was: Don’t screw around do it with excellence. But, always, there was the undercurrent of his credo of excellence. Sports and getting through school were my main goals. I was too proud and too rebellious to admit I was listening. But sometimes clichés are worth listening to Mr.McClellan trumpeted his search-for-excellence motto thousands of times during my three years in his vocal presence. This sounded like a cliché then, and it sounds like one now. Interspersed among his consistent reminders that he had authority and I didn’t was the constant admonition that whatever you do, do it with excellence. So, of course, my most valuable lesson in leadership came from my greatest, and at the time most-resisted, authority figure-Bruce McClellan, the head of my high school. I was a typical testing-type teenager challenging authority seemed to be my goal. Michael Eisner is the chairman and CEO of Disney in Burbank, California. It’s about setting the right example, after all. And that may be the most important lesson of all: Ultimately, the act of leadership is just that-action. But they find their expression in deeds, not words. Inevitably, the stories gathered here make mention of various leadership principles and philosophies. Still others found their defining moments in the social movements of the 1960s. Several other leaders were transformed by their experiences in the military. Interestingly, several of those respondents went on to single out lapses of their own as examples of bad leadership. They credited one or both parents with teaching them the principles of good leadership. Perhaps most notably, leadership began at home for several respondents. No two answers were the same, of course, but some intriguing similarities did emerge. HBR canvassed leaders in business, education, and the arts, posing to each of them two questions: What person, experience, or work of literature taught you the most about effective leadership? What person or experience taught you the meaning of bad leadership? It seems logical, then, to ask today’s leaders for their defining examples of good and bad leadership. Leadership, we’re often told, is a matter of setting the right example.
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