hbs adcom on, ahem, leadership
Sunday, July 22nd, 2007Dee-Dee Droppings–more “WTF”??? from the official HBS adcom blog — or what the hell does this mean? Inside the box below is an excerpt from Dee-Dee The Adcom Lady’s latest official HBS blog entry http://www.hbs.edu/mba/admissions/blog.html
folks, what does this mean, and how can it help you apply???
| Any of you who have heard me speak know that I worry that “leadership” can be misunderstood. Sometimes the very word conjures up a powerful figure who charges over the hill yelling “follow me!!” – someone both larger-than-life and louder-than-life! This panel gave me another opportunity to talk about leadership styles being another measure of diversity in the HBS classroom.
We are serious about finding out how individuals lead and what happens when leaders listen to each other. Imagine a case with a protagonist grappling with a challenging management team or board of directors. What if he finds him/herself suddenly in the top position at a firm with a culture that rewards a leadership approach very different from his/her natural style? We want to bring together entrepreneurial leaders, those that gravitate to positional authority in complex organizations, thought leaders and hands-on leaders who thrive with small teams. Some of the most dramatic moments in a case discussion come when a student proposes a course of action that he/she finds eminently logical and obvious —and someone else in the room finds it completely wild —even preposterous! This kind of diversity of perspectives is what makes a case method discussion so exciting and unpredictable. |
If you read Dee-Dee’s recent  interview in BW carefully, you sense her obsession with the HBS case method  where diverse opionons clang and clash to amp out some truth. She is loving those case discussions where some cat proposes something “completely wild —” at least to some other dude, or “protagonist” (her word for dude) who has another style of leadership. Weeeeel, I will leave it to the testimony of actual HBS kids to verify if those “something wild” moments in class are not more often remarks by slackers, crackpots, or wise guys (you called) than anything that is both wild and useful, who cares??? the point is to get inside Dee Dee’s head and find out what she is looking for between the tea leaves as it were of  the above primary process screed about “leadership,” which quickly zig-zags  in its bloggy way, to her homeport, which is not leadership but case method.
What is  the take away for the applicant, trying quite legitimately to game the system for some actual useful info.  First, she recognizes dif. styles of leadership, and the cliche style, Teddy Roosevelt yelling “follow me” the Rough Riders as they charge San Juan Hill is not her fav, nor is it one that many applicants have exp. with, even in their exaggerated essays. More to her liking and experience are those more quiet leadership moments, entrepreneurial leaders, those that gravitate to positional authority in complex organizations, thought leaders and hands-on leaders who thrive with small teams. Leaving aside for a moment if this laundry list has 3 or 4 items, hey, call it four, and imagine there is 1. entrep leader, 2. positional leader, 3. thought leader and 4. hand’s-on leaders in small teams, DO NOT BE SO SILLY AS BEGIN ASKING YOURSELF WHICH TYPE ARE YOU. BECAUSE YOU ARE ALL OF THE ABOVE, DEPENDING ON CIRCUMSTANCES. Such a list is a useful corkscrew of buzz words that can extract some useful refinements in any essay, even one’s nominally not about leadership. Like substantial accomplishment. They want to see a subtantial acomplishment, sure, but they also want to see how you accomplished it, how you exercised leadership, even the watered-down anything goes leadership of hand’s-on actions in small groups (not sure if hand’s-on is literal but doing small things in smal groups like sending out blast emails, putting up posters, calling the others, increasing morale, and overcoming depressions can quality as leadership, altho you dont need to call it such. Also it seems a GREAT BINGO ITEM is to describe in some essay how you responded to wild ideas of, ahem, another protagonist, whom you did not call out for being slacker, crackpot, etc. but actually respected and grew and learned from. You could do a prtty good MISTAKE essay by saying how you started out as FOLLOW ME leader on some project but in response to some WILD objections, you reigned yourself in, or did not, and shudda. All these gold is right there in the Dee-Dee dross if you know how to look.
and more, but like Dee Dee, I am a blogger too, and dont have to finish my thinking in some stinking powerpoint set of charts. “We dunneed your stinkin powerpoint 
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