The Captain Class: A New Theory of Leadership

by Sam Walker

Hackman’s theory consisted of four principles: 1. Effective leaders know some things. The best team leaders seemed to have a solid understanding of the conditions that needed to be present inside a team in order for its members to thrive. In other words, they developed a vision for the way things ought to be. 2. Effective leaders know how to do some things. In “performance” situations, Hackman noticed that the most skillful leaders seemed to always sound the right notes. They understood the “themes” that were most important in whatever situation the team was in, and knew how to close the gap between the team’s current state of being and the one it needed to reach in order to succeed. 3. Effective leaders should be emotionally mature. Hackman understood that leading a team could be “an emotionally challenging undertaking.” Great captains have to manage their own anxieties while coping with the feelings of others. The most mature leaders didn’t run away from anxiety or try to paper it over. Rather, they would pour into it with an eye toward learning about it—and by doing so find the right way to defuse it. 4. Effective leaders need a measure of personal courage. The basic work of a leader, Hackman believed, was to move a group away from its entrenched system and into a better, more prosperous one. In other words, a leader’s job is to help a team make the turn toward greatness. To do this, he believed, a leader—by definition—had to “operate at the margins of what members pres...