BU and MIT Fellows Visit Class of Barbara Kellerman at Kennedy School of Government
On October 17th, thirteen Fellows from BU and MIT gathered at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government to join a class session of The Leadership System, a course taught by Dr. Barbara Kellerman.
Dr. Kellerman is the Founding Executive Director of the Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership. Among her many accolades, she has been ranked by Forbes as among the world’s “Top 50 Business Thinkers” and by Leadership Excellence as among the Top 15 “thought leaders in management and leadership.” She co-founded the International Leadership Association (ILA) and has authored and edited many books including Leadership: Multidisciplinary Perspectives; The Political Presidency: Practice of Leadership; Bad Leadership; Followership; Women and Leadership (co-edited with Deborah Rhode); Essential Selections on Power, Authority, and Influence (2010); The End of Leadership (2012) and Hard Times: Leadership in America (2014).
The End of Leadership was listed by the Financial Times as among the Best Business Books of 2012.
Dr. Kellerman’s course at Harvard presents an inclusive, integrative approach to understanding leadership in the 21st century. It describes leadership as a system comprised of three equally important variables: the leader, the follower, and the context (or contexts—some proximate, others distal). The Fellows were deeply engaged in observing and also participating in the class, which that day was focused on the theme of “Bad Leadership and Bad Followership.”
We plan to meet Dr. Kellerman at Harvard for a dedicated discussion with Humphrey Fellows from both BU and MIT next month.