In the 1800s, great American lecturer, essayist, and poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson, said, “Be ye an opener of doors.” In this section, our contributors explore the meaning of this inspiring phrase of Emerson’s. What does it mean to open doors – for ourselves and for others – through which we can walk together toward a shared and positive vision of the future?
In his article, Michael Bungay Stanier dissects the “elegant simplicity” of the theory and practice of coaching as an opener to the door of great leadership. Gary Ridge offers lessons he learned about the true nature and purpose of business from his boyhood in suburban Sydney, Australia, drawing on these to advise how to develop truly “transformative” leadership and create “tribal unity” in modern organizational cultures. Brigadier General Tom Kolditz makes a powerful case for offering professional-caliber leadership development to students at the college and university level rather than waiting till they are more established in their careers. He also identifies tangible payoffs in terms of creating a cadre of young leaders well-suited to face the challenges of the “Fourth Industrial Revolution.” Pawel Motyl recounts how an encounter with Marshall Goldsmith – “an expert ophthalmologist” – led him to challenge his vision of himself and reevaluate his performance as CEO of a major business magazine publisher in his native Poland. He describes how he then used the insights of Peter Drucker to realign his career path with his true personal vision. Alex Osterwalder et al. use the metaphor of a garden to describe corporate culture and how it must be cultivated and tended. A Culture Map technique is introduced as a method for helping leaders and their teams assess their current culture or design a new one. Liz Wiseman expands her previous research on leadership types to describe the Accidental Diminisher – those who unintentionally and unwittingly diminish the people they lead. She outlines several precise strategies for identifying and overcoming such tendencies in your own leadership practice, along with techniques for developing into a “great” vs. merely “good” leader!