The Practice of Leadership: Developing the Next Generation of Leaders

Jay A. Conger
Ronald E. Riggio
Foreword by Bernard M. Bass
The Practice
of Leadership
Developing the Next Generation
of Leaders
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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The Practice of Leadership
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The Kravis-de Roulet Leadership Conference
The Kravis-de Roulet Leadership conference, which began in
1990, is an annual leadership conference funded jointly by an
endowment from Henry R. Kravis and the de Roulet family. This
perpetual funding, along with additional support from the
Kravis Leadership Institute and Claremont McKenna College,
enables us to attract the finest leadership scholars and practitioners
as conference presenters and participants. The 15th annual
Kravis-de Roulet Conference, Best Practices in Leadership, was
held February 25–26, 2005.
The Kravis Leadership Institute
The Kravis Leadership Institute plays an active role in the devel-
opment of young leaders via educational programs, research and
scholarship, and the development of technologies for enhancing
leadership potential.
ffirs.qxd 10/13/06 2:11 PM Page ii
Jay A. Conger

Ronald E. Riggio
Foreword by Bernard M. Bass
The Practice
of Leadership
Developing the Next Generation
of Leaders
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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Copyright © 2007 by Jossey-Bass Inc., Publishers, 350 Sansome Street, San Francisco,
California 94104.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy-
ing, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Substantial discounts on bulk quantities of Jossey-Bass books are available to
corporations, professional associations, and other organizations. For details and
discount information, contact the special sales department at Jossey-Bass Inc.,
Publishers (415) 433–1740; Fax (800) 605–2665.
For sales outside the United States, please contact your local Simon & Schuster
International Office.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Conger, Jay Alden.
The practice of leadership : developing the next generation of leaders /
Jay A. Conger.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7879-8305-5 (alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-7879-8305-5 (alk. paper)
1. Leadership. I. Riggio, Ronald E. II. Title.
HD57.7.C666 2006

658.4'092—dc22
2006031371
FIRST EDITION
HB Printing 10987654321
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Contents
Foreword vii
Bernard M. Bass
About the Authors ix
Introduction 01
Jay A. Conger and Ronald E. Riggio
Part One: Leadership Development and Selection 09
1 Best Practices in Leader Selection 11
Ann Howard
2 Best Practices in Leadership Assessment 41
Manuel London, James W. Smither, and Thomas Diamante
3 Shifting the Emphasis of Leadership Development:
From “Me” to “All of Us” 64
Patricia M. G. O’Connor and David V. Day
4 Getting Leader Development Right: Competence
Not Competencies 87
Morgan W. McCall Jr. and George P. Hollenbeck
Part Two: The Tasks of the Leader 107
5 Best Practices in the Use of Proactive Influence
Ta ct ics by Leaders 109
Gary Yukl
6 Creating the Conditions for Success:
Best Practices in Leading for Innovation 129
Michael D. Mumford, Dawn L. Eubanks,
and Stephen T. Murphy

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7 Best Practices in Ethical Leadership 150
Craig E. Johnson
8 Best Practices in Team Leadership: What Team
Leaders Do to Facilitate Team Effectiveness 172
Kevin C. Stagl, Eduardo Salas, and C. Shawn Burke
Part Three: Leading the Organization 199
9 Best Practices in Leading Organizational Change:
Wor kplace Recovery Following Major Organizational
Tr ansitions 201
Mitchell Lee Marks
10 Best Practices in Leading at Strategic Levels:
A Social Responsibility Perspective 224
David A. Waldman
11 Best Practices in Corporate Boardroom Leadership 244
Jay A. Conger
Part Four: Leading in Today’s World 261
12 Best Practices in Leading under Crisis:
Bottom-Up Leadership, or How to Be a Crisis Champion 263
Ian I. Mitroff
13 Best Practices in Leading Diverse Organizations 277
Lynn R. Offermann and Kenneth Matos
14 Best Practices in Cross-Cultural Leadership 300
Mary B. Teagarden
15 Getting It Right: The Practice of Leadership 331
Ronald E. Riggio and Jay A. Conger
Notes 345
Index 389

vi CONTENTS
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Foreword
In 1938, Kurt Lewin offered the widely quoted aphorism that there
was nothing as good for research as a good theory. In 1974, I added
that there was nothing as bad for research as a bad theory. It also needs
to be said that along with good theory about leadership we need good
practice, and we need to know the difference between good practices
and bad practices—the practices that Marvin Dunnette labeled “man-
agement fads and folderol.” Conger and Riggio have made a signal
contribution with this discriminating collection of good leadership
and management practices among the diverse areas of leadership study:
at the individual level are represented essays on assessment, competence,
innovation, ethics, and proactive influence tactics. At the organizational
level are presentations on organizational transitions, strategy and social
responsibility, corporate boardroom leadership, crisis management,
diversity in organizations, cross-cultural perspectives, team leadership,
and doing the right things in the right way. The authors are all well-
published contributors to the field.
With an estimated six thousand management and leadership prac-
tice books published annually—some grounded in good leadership
research, and unfortunately many others not so grounded—it is time
to take stock of what we know and what we don’t know about the
good, better, and best practices available for selection, development,
and organizational improvement.
This book is based on a conference held at the Kravis Leadership
Institute at Claremont McKenna College on February 23–25, 2005. It
is one of a series of books based on conferences on leadership held
since 1999.
Binghamton University B

ERNARD
M. B
ASS
D
ISTINGUISHED
P
ROFESSOR
OF
M
ANAGEMENT
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About the Authors
C. Shawn Burke is a research scientist at the Institute for Simulation
and Training of the University of Central Florida. Dr. Burke has pub-
lished more than forty articles and chapters and presented at more
than seventy peer-reviewed conferences. She is currently investigat-
ing team adaptability and its corresponding measurement, multicul-
tural team performance, leadership, and training of such teams.
Dr. Burke earned her doctorate in industrial/organizational psychology
from George Mason University and serves as an ad hoc reviewer for
Human Factors, Leadership Quarterly, Human Resource Management,
and Quality and Safety in Healthcare. She has coedited a book on adapt-
ability and is coediting a book on advances in team effectiveness
research.
Jay A. Conger holds the Henry R. Kravis Research Chair in Leadership
Studies at Claremont McKenna College. Author of many articles and
book chapters and twelve books, he researches executive leadership,

organizational change, boards of directors, executive derailment, and
leadership development. Recent books include Growing Your Com-
pany’s Leaders: How Organizations Use Succession Management for
Competitive Advantage, Shared Leadership: Reframing the Hows and
Whys of Leading Others (coauthored), Charismatic Leadership in Orga-
nizations, and Corporate Boards: New Strategies for Adding Value at the
Top (coauthored). He earned an MBA from the University of Virginia,
and DBA from Harvard Business School. He was selected by Business
Week as the best professor to teach leadership to executives.
David V. Day is professor of organizational behavior in the Lee Kong
Chian School of Business at the Singapore Management University.
Day is also an adjunct research scientist with the Center for Creative
Leadership and a senior research consortium fellow with the U.S.
Army Research Institute. His research interests focus on the develop-
ment of leaders and leadership in organizations. He recently
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completed a project sponsored by the Army Research Institute to
develop an integrative theory of leader development for the U.S. Army.
Thomas Diamante is a consulting industrial psychologist at DOAR
Litigation Consulting in New York. Formerly vice president for cor-
porate strategy and development at Merrill Lynch’s Global Securities
Research and Economics Division, he has held senior management
positions at KPMG and Altria (Philip Morris). He received his PhD
in psychology with an industrial and organizational specialization
from the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and com-
pleted postdoctoral training in clinical psychology. He is New York
State licensed.
Dawn L. Eubanks is a doctoral candidate in the Industrial and Orga-

nizational Psychology Program at the University of Oklahoma. Prior
to joining the doctoral program at the University of Oklahoma she
worked as a business analyst at the Corporate Executive Board. After
receiving her MS degree in I-O psychology from University of
Baltimore, Dawn gained experience as a consultant at Watson Wyatt
Worldwide, where she was involved with creation and analysis of
employee satisfaction instruments.
George P. Hollenbeck is an organizational psychologist who writes
and consults in the area of leadership development. His career
includes positions at IBM, Merrill Lynch, Fidelity Investments, and
the Harvard Business School (senior director, Executive Education).
He earned a PhD from the University of Wisconsin in Madison, was
a James McKeen Cattell Fund Fellow at the University of California,
Berkeley, and, as a Merrill Lynch executive, he attended Harvard Busi-
ness School’s Advanced Management Program. George’s writings
include articles (“Behind Closed Doors: What Really Happens in Exec-
utive Coaching” appearing in the Winter 1999 issue of Organization
Dynamics), book chapters [“Coaching Executives: Individual Leader
Development” in The 21st Century Executive (Jossey-Bass, 2002)], and
books (Developing Global Executives: The Lessons of International Expe-
rience, published in January 2002 by the Harvard Business School
Press, coauthored with Morgan McCall). He was the recipient of the
Distinguished Professional Contributions Award of the Society of
Industrial/Organizational Psychology in 2003. He is a fellow of that
society, a licensed psychologist in New York and Massachusetts, and a
diplomate of the American Board of Professional Psychology. George
x ABOUT THE AUTHORS
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lives in and works out of the Houston, Texas, area; he is an avid fish-
erman and a struggling golfer.

Ann Howard is chief scientist for Development Dimensions Interna-
tional. Her PhD in industrial-organizational psychology is from the
University of Maryland, and she has an honorary doctor of science
degree from Goucher College. She is the author or editor of more than
ninety publications on topics such as assessment centers, management
selection, managerial careers, leadership, and work and organizational
change. Her book (with Douglas W. Bray) on the lives and careers of
two cohorts of telephone company managers, Managerial Lives in
Transition: Advancing Age and Changing Times, received the George
R. Terry Award of Excellence from the Academy of Management. She
is a past president of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psy-
chology and the Society of Psychologists in Management.
Craig E. Johnson is professor of leadership studies at George Fox Uni-
versity, Newberg, Oregon, where he directs the Doctor of Management
Program. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in leader-
ship, ethics, and communication. He is the author of Meeting the Eth-
ical Challenges of Leadership and Ethics in the Workplace, and coauthor
of Leadership: A Communication Perspective. His research findings have
been published in the Journal of Leadership Education, Selected Pro-
ceedings of the International Leadership Association, Journal of Leader-
ship Studies, Communication Quarterly, Communication Education,
and Communication Reports.
Manuel London is Associate Dean of the College of Business, Direc-
tor of the Center for Human Resource Management, and Professor of
Management and Psychology at the State University of New York at
Stony Brook. He received his PhD from the Ohio State University in
industrial and organizational psychology. He taught at the University
of Illinois at Champaign before moving to AT&T as a researcher and
human resource manager. He joined Stony Brook 17 years ago. He
has written extensively on the topics of 360-degree feedback, continuous

learning, career dynamics, and management development. His books
include Leadership Development: Paths to Self-Insight and Professional
Growth (2002, Erlbaum) and Continuous Learning: Individual, Group,
and Organizational Perspectives (with Valerie Sessa, 2006, Erlbaum).
Mitchell Lee Marks is on the faculty of the Department of Manage-
ment at San Francisco State University and leads Joining Forces.org,
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a firm that advises on organizational change, team building, strategic
direction, organizational effectiveness, corporate culture, human
resources management, and the planning and implementation of
major organizational transitions. He has advised in more than one
hundred cases of mergers, acquisitions, restructurings, and other
major transitions. Mitch is the author of five books—including Charg-
ing Back Up the Hill: Workforce Recovery after Mergers, Acquisitions and
Downsizing, and with Philip Mirvis, Joining Forces: Making One Plus
One Equal Three in Mergers, Acquisitions, and Alliances—and scores
of articles in practitioner and scholarly journals. He earned his PhD
in organizational psychology from the University of Michigan.
Kenneth Matos is a doctoral student in the Industrial/Organizational
Psychology Program at the George Washington University. His
research interests include mentoring, diversity, and survey techniques
and response trends.
Morgan W. McCall Jr. is professor of management and organization,
Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California (USC).
A Cornell PhD, he was director of research and a senior behavioral
scientist at the Center for Creative Leadership prior to joining USC.
His research focuses on developing executive talent, and he is author
or coauthor of Developing Global Executives, High Flyers, and The
Lessons of Experience.

Ian I. Mitroff is adjunct professor of health policy at the School of
Public Health, St. Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri, and professor
emeritus at the University of Southern California (USC). He founded
and directed the USC Center for Crisis Management at the Marshall
School of Business. He has authored more than 350 papers, articles,
op-eds, and twenty-six books on the topics of crisis management,
business policy, corporate culture, contemporary media and current
events, foreign affairs and nuclear deterrence, organizational change,
organizational psychology and psychiatry, the philosophy and sociol-
ogy of science, public policy, scientific method, spirituality in the
workplace, and strategic planning. His recent books include How to
Emerge Better and Stronger from a Crisis (2005), Crisis Leadership
(2002), Managing Crises before They Happen (2000), and A Spiritual
Audit of Corporate America: A Hard Look at Spirituality, Religion, and
Values in the Workplace (1999).
Michael D. Mumford is a George Lynn Cross Distinguished Research
Professor at the University of Oklahoma, where he is director of the
xii ABOUT THE AUTHORS
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Center for Applied Social Research. Dr. Mumford received his PhD
from the University of Georgia in 1983 and has held positions at the
Georgia Institute of Technology and George Mason University. He has
received more than $20 million in grant and contract funding and
has published more than 160 articles on leadership, creativity, planning,
and integrity. The most recent of his five books is Pathways to Out-
standing Leadership: A Comparative Analysis of Charismatic, Ideologi-
cal, and Pragmatic Leaders. He currently serves as senior editor of the
Leadership Quarterly, and he sits on the editorial boards of the Cre-
ativity Research Journal, the Journal of Creative Behavior, and IEEE
Transactions on Organizational Management. Dr. Mumford is a fellow

of the American Psychological Association (Divisions 3, 5, and 14),
the American Psychological Society, and the Society for Industrial and
Organizational Psychology. He is a recipient of the Society for Indus-
trial and Organizational Psychology’s M. Scott Myers award for
applied research in the workplace.
Stephen T. Murphy is a doctoral candidate in the Industrial and Orga-
nizational Psychology Program at the University of Oklahoma. Prior
to joining the doctoral program at the University of Oklahoma he
worked as a research analyst at Hogan Assessment Systems. Stephen
also has experience as a personnel selection specialist for the State of
Te nnessee and the Personnel Board of Jefferson County after receiv-
ing his MA degree in I-O Psychology from Middle Tennessee State
University.
Patricia M. G. O’Connor is research director of Emerging Leadership
Practices at the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), Singapore Cam-
pus. Her research and innovation work focuses on the identification
and development of inter- and intra-organizational leadership prac-
tices required to address complex global challenges. She recently over-
saw the design, delivery, and evaluation of a multiyear leadership
development initiative with one of the United States’ largest organi-
zations. Engaging one hundred of their senior executives, the collab-
oration resulted in both developmental advancements and innovation
outcomes of tangible benefit to the organization. Patricia’s perspec-
tives on leadership have developed through a combination of 12 years’
experience as a senior-level manager and 6 years as a senior CCL fac-
ulty member. Previous to making the shift into an applied research
faculty role, she served on CCL’s management team as director of
business development. Patricia holds a BS degree in human resources
from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, an MBA in
About the Authors xiii

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management and organizational behavior from Bernard M. Baruch
College (CUNY), and is a member of the Academy of Management.
Lynn R.Offermann is professor of industrial/organizational psychology
at the George Washington University. Her research on leadership and fol-
lowership, teams, and diversity has appeared in such journals as the Jour-
nal of Applied Psychology, Academy of Management Journal, Leadership
Quarterly, American Psychologist, and the Harvard Business Review. She
is a member of the Academy of Management and a fellow of the Society
for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, the American Psycholog-
ical Association, and the Association for Psychological Science.
Ronald E. Riggio is the Henry R. Kravis Professor of Leadership and
Organizational Psychology at Claremont McKenna College and direc-
tor of the Kravis Leadership Institute. His research interests include
prediction of leadership and managerial potential; charismatic lead-
ership theory; nonverbal communication in social interaction; com-
munication processes in organizational settings; assessment center
methodology for personnel selection, employee development, and mea-
surement of leadership potential; and learning strategies in higher
education. His publications include numerous journal articles, book
chapters, and edited books, including Transformational Leadership
with Bernard M. Bass, Improving Leadership in Nonprofit Organiza-
tions with Sarah Smith Orr, and Future of Leadership Development and
Multiple Intelligences and Leadership with Susan E. Murphy. He
authored Introduction to Industrial/Organizational Psychology. He is
an associate editor for the Leadership Quarterly and is on the editor-
ial boards of Leadership, Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, and Leader-
ship Review. Riggio earned his BS at Santa Clara University, and MA
in psychology and PhD in social/personality psychology at the Univer-
sity of California, Riverside.

Eduardo Salas is Trustee Chair and Professor of Psychology at the
University of Central Florida. He holds an appointment as program
director for Human Systems Integration Research Department at the
Institute for Simulation and Training and previously was senior
research psychologist and head of the Training Technology Develop-
ment Branch of NAVAIR-Orlando. Dr. Salas has coauthored more
than three hundred journal articles and book chapters and has
coedited fifteen books. He is or has been on the editorial boards of
Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Military Psychology,
xiv ABOUT THE AUTHORS
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Interamerican Journal of Psychology, Applied Psychology: An Interna-
tional Journal, International Journal of Aviation Psychology, Group
Dynamics, and Journal of Organizational Behavior, and is past editor
of Human Factors journal. In addition, he has edited two special issues
(one on training and one on decision making in complex environ-
ments) for Human Factors. He has edited other special issues on team
training and performance and training evaluation (Military Psychol-
ogy), shared cognition (Journal of Organizational Behavior), and sim-
ulation and training (International Journal of Aviation Psychology). He
currently edits an annual series, Advances in Human Performance and
Cognitive Engineering Research (Elsevier). Dr. Salas has held numer-
ous positions in the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society during
the past fifteen years. He is the past chair of the Cognitive Engineer-
ing and Decision Making Technical Group and of the Training Tech-
nical Group, and served on the executive council. Dr. Salas is a fellow
of the American Psychological Association (SIOP and Division 21),
the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. He received his PhD
degree (1984) in industrial and organizational psychology from Old
Dominion University.

James W. Smither is Lindback Professor of Human Resource Man-
agement at La Salle University, where he teaches courses in human
resources management, training and development, and leadership
skills. He has consulted with more than forty firms in human
resources and leadership development. Previously, Jim was a senior
manager/group leader in corporate human resources for AT&T, where
he was responsible for developing and validating employee selection
programs for management-level positions. He received his BA (in
psychology) from La Salle and has an MA from Seton Hall University,
an MA from Montclair State University, and a PhD in industrial/
organizational psychology from Stevens Institute of Technology. Jim
has published more than forty scholarly articles and chapters. He is a
fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and the Society for
Industrial and Organizational Psychology.
Kevin C. Stagl is a doctoral candidate in the Industrial and Organiza-
tional Psychology Program at the University of Central Florida (UCF).
Kevin is currently employed at UCF’s Institute for Simulation and
Tr aining, where his research centers on team leadership, team devel-
opment, distributed team performance, and team adaptation. Prior to
joining IST, Kevin spent 5 years as a member of an organizational
About the Authors xv
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consultancy that provides human capital management decision
support.
Mary B. Teagarden is professor of global strategy at Thunderbird, the
Garvin School of International Management, where she teaches global
strategy and strategic human resource management. Her research
interests focus on competitiveness, strategic alignment, and capability
building with an emphasis on the management of technology-intensive
firms, off-shore manufacturing, high technology transfer, and strate-

gic human resource management in the People’s Republic of China,
India, and Mexico. Her current research focuses on the localization of
leadership development for transformation and strategic alignment
in the telecommunications and IT industries in India and China. She
received her PhD in strategic management from the University of
Southern California.
David A. Waldman received his PhD from Colorado State University
in industrial/organizational psychology. He currently is a professor
and chair of the Department of Management in the School of Global
Management and Leadership at Arizona State University, and an
affiliated faculty member of the Department of Management of the
W. P. Carey School at Arizona State University. His research interests
focus largely on leadership across levels of analyses, especially leader-
ship at strategic levels and leadership in virtual contexts, and also
include cross-cultural issues in leadership, as evidenced by his involve-
ment as a country coinvestigator for the United States in the GLOBE
project. Dr. Waldman’s accomplishments include scholarly and prac-
titioner articles or chapters in such journals/series as the Journal of
Applied Psychology, the Academy of Management Journal, the Academy
of Management Review, the Academy of Management Executive,
Personnel Psychology, Research in Personnel and Human Resources Man-
agement, the Journal of Vocational Behavior, Human Resource Manage-
ment, the Journal of Organizational Behavior, the Journal of
Management, the Leadership Quarterly, IEEE Transactions on Engineer-
ing Management, Research Policy, and the Journal of Engineering and
Technology Management. In addition, he has published a book on 360-
degree feedback. He is currently on the editorial boards of the Acad-
emy of Management Journal and the Leadership Quarterly, and formerly
on the editorial boards of the Journal of Applied Psychology and the
Journal of Organizational Behavior. He is an associate editor of the

Academy of Management Learning and Education and a fellow of
xvi ABOUT THE AUTHORS
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the American Psychological Association, as well as the Society for
Industrial and Organizational Psychology.
Gary Yukl received a PhD in industrial-organizational psychology
from the University of California at Berkeley in 1967. He is currently
a professor in the Management Department, University at Albany.
Dr. Yukl’s current research interests include leadership, power and
influence, and management development. He has written many arti-
cles published in professional journals and has received four best
paper or best article awards for his research. He is also the author or
coauthor of several books, including Leadership in Organizations
(6th edition, Prentice-Hall, 2006) and Flexible Leadership (Jossey-Bass,
2004). Dr. Yukl is a fellow of the American Psychological Association,
the American Psychological Society, the Society for Industrial-
Organizational Psychology, and the Academy of Management.
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The Practice of Leadership
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1
Q
Introduction
Jay A. Conger
Ronald E. Riggio
Few topics in the field of management have flourished as dramatically
as leadership. Each year, more than a hundred new books and thou-

sands of articles are published on the topic. Google lists more than a
billon “hits” when the term leadership is entered for a search. When it
comes to insights on leadership, most of us are suffering from infor-
mation overload. As editors of this book, we felt it was time to address
this flood of information. We have a simple aim: a single, easy-to-read
resource of the best and most current thinking on a broad yet essential
range of leadership topics. We had several audiences in mind when we
assembled this volume: (1) those of you who practice leadership as
managers and executives and who desire to become more effective,
(2) those of you who develop leaders and who want to improve the
ways you help others learn to lead, and (3) those of you who study and
research leadership and who want to become more informed on cer-
tain topics. We hope you will find this “one-stop” volume as informa-
tive, rich, and helpful as we intended it to be.
An underlying assumption of this book is that leadership can be
developed. While there is an age-old debate about whether leaders are
born or made, the authors in this book feel that both individuals and
their organizations can proactively influence leadership capability long
after birth. At a minimum, organizations can improve how they select
and assess for leadership. But more important, the authors highlight
how leaders can improve their own effectiveness across a wide range
of situations, from those requiring change and innovation to those
with diverse populations and differing cultures to those in crisis. Given
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the book’s emphasis on leadership practice, each of our authors frames
his or her chapter’s insights around the action steps and practical
implications of the topic. While certain chapters discuss what can and
cannot be developed, each chapter is designed to provide hands-on
guidance to implementing its insights.
HOW THE BOOK IS ORGANIZED

The book is organized into four parts: leadership development and
selection, the tasks and capabilities of leaders, the leadership of orga-
nizations, and leadership requirements of the unique demands of
today’s world. In Part One, on leadership development, we examine
the critical issues of leadership assessment and selection. A great deal
of research and investment has been made in both of these areas over
the past decade. From there, we explore the use of action learning as
a development methodology to promote new leadership forms and
identities. We close Part One with a chapter that challenges the estab-
lished paradigm of deploying behavioral competencies as the foun-
dation for leadership development efforts.
In Chapter One, author Ann Howard explores the issue of how to
select for leadership capability. Getting leader selection right can not
only boost organizational performance, but also provide employees
with an opportunity to excel in work they enjoy. “Best Practices in
Leader Selection” describes how to get the selection process right. It
reviews the objectives of selection, describes current selection tech-
niques and evidence about their efficacy, and looks at how individual
selection methods can be combined into an effective selection system.
In Chapter Two, authors Manuel London, James Smither, and
Thomas Diamante examine leadership assessment—the process of
determining the success or potential of individuals for leadership posi-
tions. They discuss how leadership assessment is used for predicting
performance, evaluating performance, diagnosing performance gaps,
and setting directions for improvement and career development.
Leadership assessment involves measuring individual characteristics
and evaluating behaviors as well as collecting indicators of group or
organizational effectiveness that result from the leader’s behavior.
Assessments can and should occur on different levels—organization,
team, and individual. They also should measure multiple dimensions—

financial, personal, and interpersonal. The authors explore these many
dimensions of assessment.
2 INTRODUCTION
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