This obituary of Abe Zaleznik, was written by Prof Manfred Kets de Vries:
Professor Abraham Zaleznik (Abe) of the Harvard Business School, a pioneer in the study of leadership and applied psychoanalytic organizational consultation, died November 28 in Boston at the age of 87.
To quote Voltaire, *To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.* After working through the grief, I had to consider how to honor Abe, how to share my thoughts with those whoknew and loved him, and how to facilitate their sharing of their own memories. Those who really knew him recognized the complicated, at times, non-transparent, but deeply compassionate man*compassion being the most meaningful embodiment of emotional maturity. He showed a great understanding of people*s struggles and disappointments, and their foibles and inadequacies. We will all remember Abe in our own way.
The life journey of scholar-iconoclast
Throughout his life, Abe excelled at anything he put his mind to. After enlisting in the Navy in 1942, Abe was sent as part of the Navy*s V12 program to Alma College in Michigan, where he was awarded an economics degree in 1945, graduating magna cum laude and earning Phi Beta Kappa. The Harvard Business School awarded him a master of business administration degree with distinction in 1947 and a doctorate of commercial science in 1951.
Abe began his career at the Harvard Business School as a research assistant in 1947. In 1960, Abe became a candidate in psychoanalysis at the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute, seeking a link between his academic organizational training, and his fascination with the vicissitudes of human nature. At the time (as non-medically trained people could not become psychoanalysts), he was granted a waiver of medical and psychiatric prerequisites and graduated as a clinical psychoanalyst in 1968. In 1971, he received certification for the practice of psychoanalysis from theAmerican Psychoanalytic Association.
He became a full professor at the Harvard Business School in 1962, and inaugurated the Cahners-Rabb chair in social psychology of management (which was a misnomer as it really covered applied psychoanalysis). In 1982, Harvard University selected Professor Zaleznik to be the holder of the Konosuke Matsushita chair in leadership from which he taught the psychodynamics of leadership. In recognition of his 43 years on the faculty, the Harvard Business School Alumni Association awarded him the Distinguished Service Award in 1996.
The focus of his work at the Harvard Business School was on the role of irrational factors in organizational decision-making. Abe was a great champion of bringing the person back into the organization, using a clinical lens. His contributions to the psychodynamic study of organizations consisted of 16 books and many articles. His seminal article *Managers and Leaders: Are They Different?* received the McKinsey Award for the best Harvard Business Review article in 1977.
As a master of using the case study method to illustrate his message (many of his cases were collected in his book Executive’s Guide to Understanding People: How Freudian Theory Can Turn Good Executives into Better Leaders), he showed how the leadership style of business leaders was influenced by their personality development and their unconscious conflicts. His book, Human Dilemmas of Leadership, published in 1966 was very influential in the study of leadership and organizational behavior. His last book Hedgehogs and Foxes: Character, Leadership, and Command inOrganizations explored motivation, decision-making, and leadership skills as they progress in life and in business. One of his observations was that leaders need a healthy dose of narcissism to lead, and they also need a healthy dose of paranoia to avoid the trap of group dependency.
What made Abe quite different from many other scholars interested in the interface of psychoanalysis and organizations is that he had a deep understanding of how organizations function; he had been a member of a number of corporate boards since 1970, including King Ranch, Ogden Corp., Timberland and American Greetings. He also served as a consultant to the U.S. government and many businesses.
A teacher, a mentor and a friend
I met Abe in 1966 when I was taking his seminar *Psychoanalytic Psychology and Management Theory* which was an eye opener to many of the participants. Frankly (and particularly at that time), where else could you find a course at a business school that focused on case studies such as Freud*s *The Wolfman,* *The Ratman*, and *The Psychotic Dr. Schreber?* I followed this seminar for a number of years (first as an MBA student, then as a doctoral candidate and later as a research fellow), and it had a profound effect on my subsequent career. Abe*s influence inspired me to do a doctoral dissertation under his supervision*and eventually to become a psychoanalyst. In 1984, when I was a Visiting Professor at the Harvard Business School (and invited by him to teach his course), he and his family made a great effort to make me feel at home in Cambridge.
I will not forget the many hours we spent together discussing various research subjects. To me, these discussions had always a magical quality. What impressed me most about Abe was his interest in people, his insights, and his sense of humor. In addition, he had a great ability to go against conventional wisdom as a way to arrive at new ideas and perspectives. He helped me (and others) on the road to an academic career, first suggesting that we write a book together (Power and the Corporate Mind), and subsequently enrolling me in a large study on individual and organizational stress that led to an article for the journal Behavioral Science. I also recall fondly one excursion we took together to Vienna to bring the applied form of psychoanalysis to the city where psychoanalysis was born. During that visit, we also took a trip to Bergasse 19, the place where Freud lived. In addition, a result of our discussions during this tour of Vienna (and few people know about this), his l!
ectures at the Wirtschaftsuniversit*t Wien became one of the catalysts for the foundation of ISPSO.
Abe*s influence only continued to grow. As a part of his *next act,* when I started INSEAD*s *Consulting and Coaching for Change* Program (now an Executive Master Degree program) with a number of colleagues, it became a tradition that Abe, as one of the *fathers of the field,* would open the first module every year, continuing to influence subsequent generations of students from around the world, long after he became an emeritus professor at the Harvard Business School. Some of those students (eager to apply their new insights about the inner world) were extremely puzzled by his advice that unlike clinical psychoanalysis, organizational consultation can do more harm than good by bringing to consciousness mental conflict that is unconscious. He recommended that Hippocrates* advice *Do no harm,* needs to be taken to heart, implying that the clinically informed consultant must be extremely selective in what he or she says.
Abe loved to come to Paris. Some of his old students (who had become professors themselves) arranged for him to receive an honorary doctorate at HEC, one of the major French business schools. For me, his visits to France were always a great opportunity to rekindle our relationship. I remember fondly the many dinners we had together in Paris with his wife Beth.
Beth was the other half of the partnership that made Abe who he was, and he missed her terribly after she died. A daughter, Dori, a son, Ira and five grandchildren survive him. I am very grateful that I had the opportunity to say goodbye to him on a very recent visit to Boston. I keep to heart, however, the comments of Jack Lemmon who once said: *Death ends a life, not a relationship.*
Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries
Clinical Professor of Leadership and Organizational Change
The Raoul de Vitry d’Avaucourt Chaired Professor of Leadership Development
INSEAD
The Business School for the World
INSEAD Global Leadership Centre
Boulevard de Constance – 77305 Fontainebleau Cedex, France
Tel.: +33(0)1.60.72.41 55 – Fax. + 33(0)1.60.72.42 23
http://www.insead.edu/facultyresearch/entrepreneurship/ketsdevries/index.htm
IGLC Website: http://www.insead.edu/iglc/
www.ketsdevries.com
www.kdvi.com <http://www.kdvi.com