Crucibles of Leadership

Defining moments—or crucibles, as author Robert J. Thomas puts it—can take an average leader and make him or her a great one. But those same life-changing events can have the opposite effect, seemingly arbitrarily, on another person. What's important, says Thomas, the executive director of Accenture's Institute for High Performing Business, is not so much the event itself, but the would-be leader's response to that event, a response that requires self-reflection and inner growth in order for real change to happen. Thomas cites the examples of John McCain's time as a prisoner of war experience and Oprah Winfrey's childhood abuse as these kinds of experiences. Thomas not only offers his research, but also his ideas on transforming your own level of leadership, with activities like videotaping yourself at work among them—which illustrates that events are important, but so is effort.

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