Harvard Management Update: Leaders: Don’t Go It Alone, 2008-Feb-28, Interview with Warren Bennis

The myth about leadership is that it’s a solitary act, that "it’s lonely at the top." But effective leaders know the truth of this passage from Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451: "We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?"

Leaders, like the rest of us, have all sorts of ways of not looking at themselves, of overlooking shortcomings. For that reason, leaders need not to be alone. They need to be bothered by people who will give them "reflective back talk."