Connections

Introduction

Recognizing the role of the leader points to the importance of how leaders are trained and developed so that they are capable of helping their institutions maintain the values of their organizations. This was found to be a concern of the defense and security leaders of the newly developed independent sovereign states of the USSR. As many of them installed democratic forms of government, the challenge was not just to declare education for reform on paper, but how to transform their educational institutions to develop leaders for the directions that had been set by their newly formed governments. This concern for sustaining institutions is in keeping with much research in the field of leadership. Leadership’s role in sustaining institutional and societal culture and in driving institutional change is clearly pointed out by experts such as Burt Nanus, who focused on visionary leadership; the late Peter Drucker, who emphasized the growth of future leaders; and Warren Bennis, who underlined the importance of developing leaders to become leaders of leaders.1 Additional recognition of the leader’s significance in both sustaining and changing culture is found in Brady’s work,2 where he cited 2001 research conducted by the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller examining the top thirty CEOs of publicly traded companies in Germany. The results showed that approximately two thirds of the public reputation of a company was determined by the leader of the organization.

In keeping with this, a later Burson-Marsteller study done in the United States examined 1155 key stakeholders, and determined that the CEO’s reputation contributed significantly to how companies are perceived. Brady pointed to leaders such as Lord Browne at BP, Chad Holliday at DuPont, Michael W. Crooke at Patagonia, and Ben Cohen at Ben and Jerry’s, who have understood that their legacies as leaders established the tone and sustainability of their organizations and made this an organizational priority.