WMU Magazine
The reluctant guru
Management training gurus like Tom Peters and Stephen Covey have nothing on WMU’s Peter Northouse, the author of the nation’s leadership ‘must-read’ and a scholar who likes to keep a low profile.
When it comes to teaching leadership, WMU communication professor Peter Northouse wrote the book.
Northouse’s “Leadership Theory and Practice” is the best-selling academic textbook on leadership and has been since it came off the presses a decade ago. Now in its fourth edition, it has been translated into six foreign languages, including Chinese and Arabic, and is used by hundreds of colleges and universities, including top MBA programs at Stanford, Dartmouth, Columbia, the University of Virginia and New York University. Disney College, the entertainment empire’s professional development program, as well as national leadership coaching firms list Northouse’s book as required reading.
“It is hands down the most popular textbook for teaching leadership in the United States,” says Sage Publications Senior Editor Al Bruckner. Based on figures provided by a national association of college bookstores, Bruckner says each new edition of Northouse’s book “has doubled in the number of students who use it.”
It probably surprises many who know Northouse to hear he’s considered an expert in the field of leadership. A lanky man with a boyish grin, Northouse doesn’t exactly exude the expected ego that comes with being a leadership guru.
“Peter is beyond modest,” says colleague and WMU School of Communication Director Steve Rhodes. “He consults and teaches at Disney and for the Canadian Armed Services—Disney even gave him an honorary ‘duck-torate.’ He goes to these national leadership conferences where he’s a featured speaker right there with the other big names in the field and no one here knows, because he would never tell you.”
Leadership can be taught
Northouse, a WMU faculty member for 33 years, admits to being shy about discussing himself and his work. “Leadership Theory and Practice” was written simply because he needed a textbook for a class he was teaching and no other texts fit the bill. He never expected it to be such a success.
“This book is a wonderful example, especially for young faculty, of how to write that first book,” says Rhodes. “The first edition was the leadership course that Peter was teaching. You look at that early syllabus and the topics and approaches in that became the outline he adopted for the book.
“He truly writes what he teaches and teaches what he writes.”
Each of the book’s 14 chapters analyzes a specific leadership approach, examines case studies and, perhaps most uniquely, provides a self-assessment exercise to measure the reader’s leadership style. Each revision takes Northouse about three years to complete, with careful attention paid to the fluidity of leadership trends and demographics.
“Being aware of leadership theories and research is important when you are a leader,” Northouse says.
“You can learn leadership skills and philosophies that help you to change your behavior to be more effective.”
This view flies in the face of a prevailing philosophy that “leaders are born, not made,” a belief that makes millions for the Jack Welch-types who pen the “led-and-lived-to-tell-about-it” tomes currently filling bookstore shelves.
“Yes, without question, leadership can be taught,” Northouse says. “Some people are naturally more charismatic, but you can be a good leader without being charismatic. There are hundreds of leadership traits—research has shown there aren’t any definitive traits that all successful leaders have. Leadership has to do with creating a vision, being a role model and empowering others.
“I believe everyone can learn how to be a leader because leadership is about how the leader behaves and responds to his or her followers.”
Northouse says the idea that leadership can be taught is becoming more accepted, as evidenced by the burgeoning number of leadership books and programs now being taught on all levels of academe.
“People are interested in being better leaders, there’s no doubt about that,” he says.
To that end, Northouse is now working on a new text, “Fundamentals of Leadership,” which will be more prescriptive in nature. Despite his success and work as a corporate consultant, he doesn’t seem totally comfortable with this new role.
“I’m not the person who marches into an organization saying ‘you do this and everything will be wonderful,’ so it’s hard to write a book about what someone ‘oughta do’ to be a good leader,” he explains. “It depends on the situation.
“I have a hard time seeing myself writing something like ‘Peter’s 10 Aphorisms of Leadership’—you know, a 100-page book that a user would pick up, read number four on the list that says something like ‘leaders listen with great care,’ and then goes off to work that day saying, ‘Oh, yeah, I can do that.’”
When Northouse was approached by a large publisher to produce such a book, he declined.
“Peter isn’t a person who thinks he’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning type of writer,” says Dr. Laurel Northouse, the Mary Lou Willard French Professor of Nursing at the University of Michigan, co-director of the Socio-Behavior Program at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center and Northouse’s wife. She co-authored the very first textbook Northouse wrote, “Health Communication.”
“He is a slow and methodical writer who sees himself as creating something important for students,” she explains. “He puts all his energies into college-level teaching. That’s where he has his heart. He’s not out there to be a big guru.”
Staying low-profile and committed
It seems where Northouse puts his energy, success follows. Nearly 30 years ago, he fought off Hodgkin’s disease, a cancer of the lymph system. And in typical Northouse fashion, his illness was not common knowledge.
“Shortly after he took his job at Western, he got Hodgkin’s Disease,” Laurel says. “He went through a year of chemotherapy and back then, it was pretty toxic stuff. But he arranged to take chemo on Fridays so that he would be ready to teach on Monday. He was sick all weekend but he never missed a day of work. He was that devoted.”
It was during his cancer treatment that Northouse began running, “as a way to reinforce his health and move on,” says Laurel. Rhodes, already an avid runner, became Northouse’s close friend and running partner.
“He needed to exercise, and we’d go to the track and run,” Rhodes recalls. “He could barely get around one lap.”
It wasn’t long, though, before Northouse was running marathons. He has since racked up 21 marathons, completing the Boston Marathon four times. “It’s an unusual year if he doesn’t run one marathon,” says Rhodes.
At 61, Northouse may not lead the pack anymore when running, but his wife says he was most definitely a leader when it came to supporting her pursuit of a career in academe.
“We were married 36 years ago, and that was a time when it was not common for husbands to support wives in their efforts to get graduate degrees,” she says. “We lived in Kalamazoo and I commuted to school. Then I received a large grant to do work at Wayne State University in Detroit. Peter said he was willing to take his turn with the commute and we moved to Ann Arbor so I could be closer to my work. He’s continued commuting since then and is absolutely committed to our dual careers.”
The Northouses have lived in Ann Arbor for 18 years, raising two children, Scott and Lisa. Rhodes admits he’s surprised Northouse hasn’t left WMU to teach at an institution closer to home. “It would have made his life a hell of a lot easier,” he says. “But he’s committed to Western.”
That commitment became more visible earlier this year, when the Northouses established a $20,000 scholarship in WMU’s School of Communication. The scholarship is not designed for the student with the perfect GPA, but for those who show promise and contribute in the classroom, says Laurel.
“Peter just doesn’t think like an elitist in any manner,” she says. “He cares about all students, not just the brightest students, and wants to help those students develop.”
Rhodes says that’s why Northouse is meant to teach leadership.
“Who better?” he asks.