Bob Korstad, Alma Blount, Tony Brown and Bruce Payne tell stories about how their life experiences have informed their understanding of what leadership is and how to teach it, and why mentoring is central to their approaches.
There's a framework of working with communities…there's working for them, working with them and being with them…I think it's very important for me to do all three in my work.
We're all facing a lot of challenges where we might see something that's wrong and need to find our voice to be able to stand up, and that base of moral courage has given us the ability to do that.
I remember how important it is everyday to tell the right story.
It's a journey that we're all on, but just at different stages.
No one cared that I'd gone to these fancy schools. No one cared that I was a lawyer…What mattered was what I was going to do for them.
Leadership is acting in accordance with your values. And you can't decide your values on the fly.
You challenge everything and you ask questions. You disrupt. This is how change happens. I learned…constant reflection and acknowledgement of the fact that it's messy.
That was the gift…the courage to leap and the support in my life to have been able to do so with success.
The work I do now is really rooted in the idea the everybody has a story.
It was this kind of moment of awakening of I want to know what that power is about. I want to be engaged with it. And I want to try to harness it for good.
How do you find things that we can agree on… and how we get united around that, rather than getting sidetracked on things that would otherwise divide us?
The things that attracted me were this notion that you could - through exploration and asking the right questions - get at the truth if you dug hard enough.
What was the ultimate outcome of an education at Hart Leadership? If you think about it carefully, it's to change what you believe.
I think one of the most important values and lessons that I acquired…is listening.
We're often rewarded for how much we can influence others or how well we can speak. I think we're less rewarded for how well we can listen.
It's not about your making a judgment about who was a good or a bad person. It's merely about forcing yourself to at least engage and see if from their perspective.
Learning and making mistakes and not being perfect was part of the leadership process.
You often get as much or learn as much out of the doing and the trying and the process. And even if you're not the first one to cross the finish line, you've learned how to run a race.
And I think what that moment…helped me do is appreciate that I'm seeing a snapshot... I'm walking into a particular chapter of somebody's life…I'm just getting a slice.
I found comfort just in knowing that others had been through it and had found their way.
Going through that kind of analysis really helped you in taking risks, because you kind of understood that, you know, everybody doesn't always get there the first time.
The values…were service, altruism…The imperative: that those who were blessed with lots of talent exercise those talents in ways that helped improve the lot of those less well off in society.
It can be such an opportunity and a pleasure to lose yourself in the lives and experiences of other people.
If you can give people the strength to say, "This is what I'm going to do, and this is why I'm going to do it," they may have to pay a price for doing it, but they'll never regret that.
The faculty of the Hart Leadership Program reflect on the life lessons that shaped the way they teach leadership.
You challenge everything and you ask questions. You disrupt. This is how change happens. I learned…constant reflection and acknowledgement of the fact that it's messy.
The things that attracted me were this notion that you could through exploration and asking the right questions get at the truth if you dug hard enough.