10/30 9:00am pst - Harvard Business School historian, professor, Nancy Koehn discusses her timely and insightful new book, FORGED IN CRISIS: The Power of Courageous Leadership in Turbulent Times (starred Booklist & Kirkus).

FORGED IN CRISIS
The Power of Courageous Leadership
In Turbulent Times
by Harvard Business School historian
Nancy Koehn

For leaders in the 21st century, there is one pressing question: What set of skills is required to lead in crisis, and can history give us answers? Harvard Business School historian and professor Nancy Koehn has surveyed some of history’s greatest leaders and made an incredible discovery: courageous leaders are not born but made, and the power to lead resides in each of us. Forged in Crisis is the dramatic, insightful epic that can teach anyone how to develop remarkable leadership skills.

We live in a time when faith and confidence in leaders—whether in government, business, or religion—is nil. People sense with growing unease that everything is at stake—long-formed international alliances, the economy, a unified Europe, even the fate of the planet—and yet the highest offices across the globe are occupied by the inexperienced and untested, those who lack the decency, decorum, and courage required of the positions they hold.
We’re led by people we cannot fully trust and the pressing questions are great: what set of skills is required to lead, both in times of stability and of crisis? What traits must we seek in those to whom we hand our fate? How do we become the types of leaders the world needs right now? In her masterly new book FORGED IN CRISIS: The Power of Courageous Leadership in Turbulent Times, celebrated Harvard Business School historian Nancy Koehn delivers in-depth portraits of five of history’s most brilliant leaders, spotlighting the diverse skills they relied on to lead, especially in moments of crisis.

Based on personal letters, diaries, archival material, and official records, Forged in Crisis presents the remarkable life journeys of polar explorer Ernest Shackleton; President Abraham Lincoln; legendary abolitionist Frederick Douglass; Nazi-resisting clergyman Dietrich Bonhoeffer; and environmental crusader Rachel Carson—united here in their struggle to transform from ordinary people into great leaders. Koehn begins each of the book’s five sections by showing its protagonist on the precipice of a great crisis: Shackleton marooned on an Antarctic ice floe; Lincoln on the verge of seeing the Union collapse; escaped slave Douglass facing possible capture; Bonhoeffer agonizing over how to counter absolute evil with faith; Carson racing against the cancer ravaging her in a bid to save the planet. The narrative then reaches back to each person’s childhood and shows the individual growing—step by step—into the person he or she will ultimately become.

Readers observe the qualities that these icons draw on to not just meet but triumph over great challenges, in the process becoming real leaders. By examining how these qualities emerge, Forged in Crisis offers a remarkable template by which to judge the leaders of our own time. Koehn also delivers an inspiring and important reminder that great leaders are made, not born, and that ordinary people are capable of extraordinary things.

In the vein of works by David McCullough and Doris Kearns Goodwin, Forged in Crisis is a compelling historical narrative and a repository of great insight. More than that, it is a book that matters, perhaps now more than ever. Ten years in the writing, Forged in Crisis stands as a towering achievement.