Crucibles of Leadership: How to Learn from Experience to Become a Great Leader

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EXPERIENCE-BASED LEADER DEVELOPMENT

The Organizational Dimension

Experience is not so much what happens to you as what you make of what happens to you.

—Aldous Huxley

WHERE DO THE MOST IMPORTANT formative events for leaders occur? If you’ve read to this point in the book, you already know what the answer isn’t: it isn’t in the classroom, the assessment center, the company off-site, or the annual performance review. It isn’t in the conventional domain of leader development, and it isn’t within the purview of most performance management systems. Rather, the richest and most memorable events are leaders’ personal crucible experiences.

So, do organizations take full advantage of these rich development opportunities? Not really. In fact, my ...