Executive Interviews: Interview with Allan R Cohen on Staying on Top, Always
October 2009 - By Dr. Nagendra V Chowdary

Allan R Cohen
Edward A Madden Distinguished Professor of Global Leadership at Babson College.

• Should leadership be looked at as a science or an art? If it is a science, what are the universal principles of leadership? If it is to be believed to be an art, what does it take to master the art of leadership, true leadership?
  I believe I have already indicated that it is difficult if not impossible tomake it a science. The variables areway too complex. That doesn’t mean it is not possible to try to extract some useful principles, but they will be contingent and never fully prescribe what to do. Insofar as leadership is an art, the secret is to practice, practice, practice – and to keep examining the results and learning from experience. Finding people you trust to give you feedback about how you have done is another critical element, sadly lacking among far too many managers. Many managers have the strange idea that they must not ever admit mistakes, publicly or to themselves. How else can you keep learning and improving?

• Are leadership styles influenced by national cultures?
  National cultures certainly have an impact on leadership styles, and it is entertaining to think about such differences. But many other things have an impact on leadership style too, including company culture, departmental culture, regional culture, one’s current boss, the relevant reward system, past work experiences, the latest leadership theories, and so on. So one has to be careful about over-generalizing the impact of differences in national culture. Furthermore, national cultures and industries within those cultures are changing. My recent interviews in India revealed that certain contemporary companies in the high-tech world are working very hard to change traditional cultural assumptions about things like speaking up to higher authorities.

• What according to you should be the role of an organization in nurturing and developing the leadership talent within the company? GE has always been known as CEOs factory, for instance. What should other companies do to produce the high quality leadership?
  One of the best ways to nurture leadership, certainly exercised at GE, is to create many jobs that have leadership responsibilities, of increasing and varying size, location, and industry: Getting people a chance to take responsibility, be held accountable for results, have to inspire others, envision the future and sell it, and find other ways that leaders can practice and grow. Even though I have spent my life doing management and leadership development, and believe in it, the total impact ofwhat educators likeme create is smaller than actually placing people in varied leadership positions.

• In Most MBA curricula, leadership is often offered as one of the many optional courses. Should a course on leadership be made mandatory at business schools? Any progress on this front either in US or European business schools?
  This is a tricky question; as I said earlier leadership is all intertwined with the actual contents of business or other organizations, and it is, or ought to be, taught in the process of teaching those subjects. To do what is appropriate requires far more integration in the curriculum than most business schools have been willing to do. We have been working hard on this at Babson College where I teach, and we have made considerable progress in the core curriculum; leadership is highly intertwined with other subjectmatter. We do teach a leadership elective for those who want to go deeper, but we want everyone who goes through our MBA programs to have the desire and skill to be effective entrepreneurial leaders. Many schools in the US and Europe talk about this, but implementation has been slow because of the power of fragmented academic disciplines and their resistance to change.

  It is probably worth mentioning that not all MBA programs have the same focus; some programs aim at developing staff specialists with great technical skills so do not pay very much attention to general management or leadership skills. But in those that do, leadership in all its ramifications is a central part of what the program ought to be doing.

• If you have tomake a list of top 10 business leaders in the last century and top 10 current business leaders, who would they be and why would they be?
  I can’t do this in an educated way because it is too hard to judge effective leaders from outside their companies. When a company is successful too much credit is given to the person who happens to be the formal leader at the time, making it hard to have informed judgments.