Leigh Hafrey, a lecturer in ethics, communication, and leadership at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and a Senior Moderator for the Aspen Institute, recommends his favourite books, articles and movies on leadership.
Vaclav Havel, Summer Meditations
James McGregor Burns, Leadership
William Deresiewicz, “Solitude and Leadership” (essay)
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince
Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas
T.H. White, The Once and Future King
Stephen Frears, The Queen (film)
Stacy Peralta, Riding Giants (film)
Leigh is the author of The Story of Success: Five Steps to Mastering Ethics in Business, a book on how people use story to articulate ethical norms.
Based on fifteen years of conversations with business people, he articulated five steps that generate ethical practice:
1. Speak Up, Speak Out: define your managerial style
2. See the Big Picture: recognize the forces that affect your practice
3. Break the Rules, Make the Rules, Absorb the Costs: drive change, and know it
4. Tell Good Stories: find stories that bring out the best in your people and yourself
5. Test for Truth: distinguish fact from fantasy in your story-telling
Leigh is currently working on a sequel, tentatively titled War Stories: Demilitarizing American Leadership.
At #Story14 he talked about how we can lead and fulfill individual and organizational apirations through stories. Watch an exclusive interview about the importance and relevance of stories in leadership.
