Adversity and Leadership: Perspective of Dr. John Kotter,Professor Emeritus Harvard Business School

By Howard Edward Haller, Ph. D.

This groundbreaking leadership research by has received extensive endorsements and enthusiastic reviews from well-known prominent business, political, and academic leaders who either participated in the study or reviewed the research findings. You will discover the proven success habits and secrets of people who, in spite of difficult or life threatening challenges shaped their own destiny to become successful, effective leaders. The full results of this research will be presented in the upcoming book by Dr. Howard Edward Haller titled “Leadership: View from the Shoulders of Giants.”

The nine initial prominent successful leaders who overcame adversity that were interviewed included: Dr. Tony Bonanzino, U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch, Monzer Hourani, U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye, Dr. John Malone, Larry Pino, U.S. Army Major General Sid Shachnow, Dr. Blenda Wilson, and Zig Ziglar.

The data from the above nine research participants was materially augmented by seven other successful leaders who overcame adversity including: Jack Canfield, William Draper III, Mark Victor Hansen, J. Terrence Lanni, Angelo Mozilo, Dr. Nido Qubein, and Dr. John Sperling.

Additionally, five internationally known and respected leadership scholars offered their reviews of the leadership research findings including: Dr. Ken Blanchard, Jim Kouzes, Dr. John Kotter, Dr. Paul Stoltz, and Dr. Meg Wheatley.

This is a short biography of one of the principal participants who generously contributed their time and insight for this important research into the phenomenon of how prominent successful leaders overcome adversity and obstacles.

During our peer debriefing discussion of my Doctoral dissertation research, Harvard Business School Professor Emeritus John Kotter specifically commented on my finding that adversity in the early lives of the participants was not the most important. He said, “The criticism you get on that is this is self-report.” He continued, “A lot of it’s memory. They can’t remember the mini tragedies or the tragedies of youth well, as they can the events later on, or they have psychotically dealt with it. The ‘shrinks’ would give us all kinds of reasons why this is silly. That doesn’t mean that it is.”

Kotter later returned to this topic, “This point is interesting, by the way. I was not suggesting that it wasn’t.” He pointed out that “there is a heavy, almost an ideology that has developed for a century now, among the depth psychologists, the psychiatrists and the like that it really is all [ages] 1 to 5, and after that not much matters.”

Kotter discussed the quote by Nietzsche, “that which does not kill you makes you stronger.” He said:

That’s what we always fall back on-that classic quote, which seems to have a lot of validly. The one thing I really went into the most depth in this topic [adversity and leadership]. I wrote a biography on Konosuke Matsushita [1997, Matsushita Leadership Lessons from the 20^th Century’s most remarkable entrepreneur]. Nobody associates that name in the United States because he didn’t put his name on the product. The biggest brand in the United States is Panasonic. He is a national hero in Japan. His life story is incredible. His entire family gets wiped out by various diseases, seven brothers and sisters, mother, father, by the time he is thirty. Matsushita’s story is all about hardships [and overcoming adversity]. This guy gets ‘blasted’ at age 4, age 8, and age 28. It has to be you look at all the details, events, and hardships of his life. These hardships, or adversities, instead of driving him down, it drives him up.

Kotter than summed up his thoughts on this aspect with, “I think there is a lot there [in the importance of overcoming adversity or hardships]. It is an important piece too.”

Kotter shared that he is “currently writing three books. One of them is a business book which looks at 16 incredible life stories, one of which is Matsushita.” John “found that they shared six things in common. One of them is they behave, surprisingly against expectations, humble.” Kotter (1997) called Konosuke Matsushita a man with a “humble heart and an open mind” (p. 249).

Kotter noted that my point about the importance of family and faith was not a common theme in business nor leadership literature, but was quite accurate and important. He said “the ‘family-faith thing,’ I think is very interesting because in intellectual secular circles that’s not necessarily in vogue. But it rings true from what I’ve seen over the years – it rings very much true.” He added, “That’s [importance of family and faith] interesting and that’s much less subject to criticism. Because they say it, it has some validity. They have some perspective on it, they made it through.”

Dr. Kotter has written so many outstanding books on management and leadership that just naming a few favorites is indeed very difficult. However Dr. John Kotter’s Matsushita Leadership Lessons from the 20^th Century’s most remarkable entrepreneur (1997), his classic Leading Change (1996) and his more recent The Heart of Change: Real-Life Stories of How People Change Their Organizations (2002), which Dr. John Kotter wrote with Dan S. Cohen, are three outstanding leadership books which I enjoyed and I am pleased to recommend highly.

Copyright 2006 © Howard Edward Haller, Ph.D.

Howard Edward Haller, Ph.D.

Chief Enlightenment Officer

The Leadership Success Institute

www.TheLeaderInstitute.com