Leading Leaders

PREFACE

I FIRST BEGAN to think seriously about the subject of leadership in May 1980 when I was appointed dean of the School of Law of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. After the university’s president James Zumberg offered me the job and I had accepted, he proceeded to give me what I later came to call the ‘‘leadership speech,’’ a pep talk that tells a newly appointed leader the wonderful things that are expected to happen under his or her leadership. As President Zumberg expressed his confidence that the law school’s faculty would be strengthened, the student body improved, and the endowment increased under my leadership, I remember thinking, ‘‘What is this man talking about?’’

Leadership was just not a word I associated with ...