Intentional Leadership
Book

Intentional Leadership

The Big 8 Capabilities Setting Leaders Apart

Rose M. Patten
University of Toronto Press, 2023
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8

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Rose M. Patten, a prominent Canadian businesswoman and Chancellor of the University of Toronto, set out to explore how leadership evolves in difficult circumstances and to pinpoint essential leadership abilities. Her resulting framework, the “Big 8,” was the subject of 25 one-week sessions of discussion and debate in Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and the BMO Executive Leadership Programs. Patten highlights common myths about the eight pivotal leadership capabilities she identifies and encourages leaders to make the most of self-awareness, feedback, intention, adaptability and good character.

Summary

Critical challenges can make leaders stronger.

Enduring a crisis can build a leader’s skills. This can happen not only during times of widespread turmoil, like the global financial crisis of 2008 or the COVID-19 pandemic, but also amid emergencies that have significance only within specific industries or organizations.

Few businesses grapple in advance with the impact turbulent change will have on their senior executives or think about the issues that force leaders to change. Yet during an upheaval, leaders honed by crisis are often the ones who take on the responsibility of reshaping their organizations.

Organizations react to the speed, systemic nature and volatility of change by developing new ways of doing business, new operating systems and fresh customer service strategies. However, they rarely consider how daunting challenges build leaders – and neither do leaders themselves. In the aftermath of a crisis, leaders should examine how they acted while under pressure, consider the effects of these “defining moments,” and reflect on what they learned as they dealt with challenges that forced them...

About the Author

Rose M. Patten is a Canadian businessperson and philanthropist. Since 2018, she has served as the Chancellor of the University of Toronto. Patten was named to the Hall of Fame of Canada's Top 100 Most Powerful Women in 2007.

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