Teaching the leadership gospel

This article is part of the Contemporary leadership series

Few would deny the increasing demands on leaders today. They are under short-term pressures to produce results to increasingly insistent customers, clients, patients and others. They face unparalleled rates of global, competitive, and technological change. The boundaries between their personal and professional lives are blurred and they are under constant scrutiny with social media creating transparency. Their private actions become public events. Long term feels like “Tuesday” as there is seldom enough time to celebrate success before the next expectation emerges. 

Dave Ulrich is one of the world’s leading experts on HR and leadership. He is Rensis Likert Professor of Business, University of Michigan and a Partner at the consulting firm the RBL Group dou [at] umich.edu. He has a prodigious output of HR, leadership, and organisation related publications. These include more than 20 books. In The Why of Work: How Great Leaders Build Abundant Organisations That Win (2011), Ulrich, with his psychologist wife Wendy, examines people’s motivation for working and what they get out of work. He was No. 27 in the 2015 Thinkers50, the ranking of the world’s most influential management thinkers.