‘Forged in Crisis’: A look at courageous leadership, apt for these interesting times

In her new book, “Forged in Crisis,” Harvard Business School professor and historian Nancy Koehn shows us how five ordinary people became unforgettable leaders.

Koehn spent 10 years poring over archives to research the lives of President Abraham Lincoln, abolitionist Frederick Douglass, anti-Nazi clergyman Dietrich Bonhoeffer, environmentalist Rachel Carson and polar explorer Ernest Shackleton. She offers a glimpse at effective agents of worthy change, leaders who saw the “intersection of human agency and larger historical forces” and incited others to right action.

The Chicago Tribune talked to Koehn, a native Chicagoan, by phone.

“My book is a call for all the goodness in people to keep on keepin’ on,” she said.

“Find your muscles of moral courage, whatever the cause of goodness that you’re involved in, that calls to you, do it because the world needs you really badly right now.”

The following is a transcript of the conversation, edited for clarity and space.

Q: Who’s the audience for this book?

A: I’ve always aimed, in my heart, for the curious reader from any walk of life who wants to use inspiring, serious stories of how ordinary people make themselves capable of doing extraordinary things to help them lead, live and work. I want nurses, firemen and teenagers to get inspired by this book a as well as silverback g gorillas at all kinds of levels of power in business and society in the government a and nonprofits. I would like it to be read by some in Congress, so they find some courage.

Q: How did you choose the five iconic people to p put in the book? A: I wanted a diverse group. I wanted people who had not had a kind of … uninterrupted highway to the stars. As I got to know these stories, I just thought the whole was greater than the sum of the parts.

Q: Is it a good time to be a historian now?

A: Yes, it’s interesting to be a historian, but it’s also deeply frightening. …You go back to history to ask, what can we draw from the courage of former generations of Americans that fought for a nation founded on the proposition that all men are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? There is nothing more fundamental and important than that.

There aren’t nearly enough people speaking out about the affronts to our republic and to the soul of the country.

Q: Empathy and compassion are words used often with these leaders. How does one connect with their humanity during a crisis?

A: One of the things that all five of these people teach us is to cultivate empathy for people who are oppressed, those who have less than you, those who are suffering. All of these people never lost their access to people who had less than they did, and I think that’s so important right now.

How do we cultivate an understanding for, an awareness of, those around us who are suffering even more or much more than we are, when suffering takes many forms? Would that our leaders were operating with at least some attention to the view from below—because that will really develop your compassion muscles, really develop a kind of imagination about what we need to do to help all kinds of people.

Compassion makes us better and bolder. It actually makes us better leaders. These stories prove that; that’s what’s so powerful about them.