Virtuous Leaders: Strategy, Character, and Influence in the 21st Century

Twenty-first century organizational leaders face many difficult challenges. As governments and businesses expand to meet the needs of an ever-increasing population, the decisions leaders make today are more important than ever. With rising competition amid the uncertainty of a progressively globalized economy, success and failure are increasingly defined on an ever-grander scale. In these trying times, how can executives and other business, government, and nonprofit leaders guide their organizations to success amid the challenges of the modern world?

In this extensively researched yet thoroughly practical book, renowned executive consultant Richard Kilburg characterizes effective leadership as a combination of specific behaviorally based competencies and virtuous aspects of character. He demonstrates that despite all the complexities of the modern world, the foundations of executive leadership can still be found in the timeless and enduring virtues of the ancient Chinese and Greeks.

With rich and informative discussions of the classical and modern literatures on virtue and executive leadership, and a wealth of exercises and questionnaires that translate models of leadership into plans for action, Virtuous Leaders is a vital resource for leaders and executive consultants alike, and is sure to become a classic in the field.

Preface

1. The Timeless Need for Leaders
2. Establishing Strategy and Setting Direction: What Is Expected From Executives
3. The Psychodynamic Origins of Seven Deadly Management Errors
4. Wisdom, Courage, Temperance, Justice, and Reverence: Platonic Virtues and Leadership Competence
5. Reverence and Temperance: Foundations for Virtuous Leadership
6. The Evolution of Executive Conscience and the Practice of Justice
7. The Arts of Strategic Influence: Making Effective Performance Possible

Epilogue

References

Index

About the Author

Richard R. Kilburg received his PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1972. He attended a postgraduate program in mental health administration at the Community Psychiatry Laboratory at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1976–1977 and obtained a master's degree in professional writing from Towson University, Baltimore, Maryland, in 1992.

He has held positions in the Department of Psychiatry of the University of Pittsburgh as an assistant professor; as the director of the Champlain Valley Mental Health Council, a community mental health center in Burlington, Vermont; APA's offices of Professional Affairs and Public Affairs; and the Human Resources Department of the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, where he directed the human resources development programs.

Dr. Kilburg has also been in private practice as a clinician and consultant. He was an associate professor and director of the Master's in Business Administration/Organization Development Program in the Carey Business School at the Johns Hopkins University 2007–2010. He is the CEO of RRK Coaching and Executive Development, a consulting firm based in Baltimore, Maryland.

He has published widely in the fields of management, professional impairment, and executive coaching. He has published five previous books with APA: Professionals in Distress: Issues, Syndromes, and Solutions in Psychology; How to Manage Your Career in Psychology; Executive Coaching: Developing Managerial Wisdom in a World of Chaos; Executive Wisdom: Coaching and the Emergence of Virtuous Leaders; and The Wisdom of Coaching, coedited with Richard Dietrich.

He was the founding president of the Society of Psychologists in Management, and he is a fellow of APA Division 13 (Consulting Psychology). He is the recipient of the 2002 Distinguished Contribution to Psychology in Management Award given by the Society of Psychologists in Management and the 2005 Harry and Miriam Levinson Award for Outstanding Contributions to Consulting Organizational Psychology given by APA.

Dr. Kilburg has one son, Benjamin, and currently lives in Towson, Maryland, with his wife, Joy Moore.