What it takes to lead
A trip to any bookstore reveals that treatises on leadership are a dime a dozen. And at America’s graduate schools, courses on the subject — in every field from business to public administration to education — are almost as prevalent. But for all the evidence that people want to become leaders, not many experts are willing to say just what that means. “People write about leadership without ever getting around to defining it,” said Nan Keohane, a member of the Harvard Corporation, the University’s governing body, since 2005. As Harvard and other universities mull the best ways to prepare future leaders in every sector, few people are better suited to tackle the topic than Keohane, author of the recently published book “Thinking About Leadership.” A political theorist turned president of Wellesley College and later of Duke University, she went from studying famous tracts on leadership by Machiavelli and Plato to occupying a lofty...