INTRODUCTION: DOING THE RIGHT THING

Leadership is a journey with many twists and turns, providing many interesting learning opportunities. For me, one of the unexpected developments occurred in 2004 when, at age forty-nine, I left Baxter International, the multibillion-dollar global health care corporation where I had worked for more than twenty years, the last six serving as chairman and CEO. Closing that chapter in my life opened another one that led to a deeper exploration of leadership and, ultimately, this book.

Shortly after leaving Baxter and contemplating what to do next in my life, I was asked by Don Jacobs, the dean emeritus of Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, and Dipak Jain, then the dean at Kellogg, to consider teaching. The opportunity to positively influence students who would become the next generation of leaders intrigued me, so I said yes. Today I am fortunate to teach more than six hundred students each year in classes in the MBA programs at Kellogg. Since taking on this teaching role—which usually requires a Ph.D. I don't have—I've often joked that one day someone will find out that I am not qualified to teach and ask me to leave! But I now realize that the school and the students have found value in my real-world experiences. I also understand what people mean when they say that by teaching, they learn more than the students do. Teaching leadership classes to very bright students has made the concept of leadership much clearer to me.

In my current role, I teach from firsthand knowledge—the same experiences that I draw from in this book. In addition to my experiences at Baxter, my work as an executive partner at Madison Dearborn Partners, one of the leading private equity firms in the United States, gives me a front-row view of both the challenges facing leaders today and the opportunities available to them. My work at Madison Dearborn puts me in touch with leaders in companies across a variety of industries, including health care, consumer, energy, and communications—a diversity that I don't take for granted. My understanding of leadership has also been profoundly affected by my service on boards of public, private, and nonprofit organizations. While I was an executive with Baxter, I served on the boards of several organizations, but it was difficult to be involved as much as I would have liked. Today I am an active board member for about a dozen organizations and have served as the chairman of the board of trustees of Lawrence University in Wisconsin, my undergraduate alma mater, and of NorthShore University HealthSystem, which includes the hospital where all my children were born.

Through these various experiences—serving as CEO of a large corporation, coaching leaders through my work at Madison Dearborn, serving on boards, and teaching at Kellogg—I have grown to appreciate that all of us, from the new intern to the CEO, can exhibit leadership. How we think and act influences the culture of the organization in both direct and subtle ways. The way we treat customers, interact with colleagues, report to supervisors, deal with vendors, and so forth reflects our values. If we are not aware of those values, these interactions will not be effective.

Values-based leadership allows leaders to hold true to these values to make a difference in their lives, their organizations, and the world.