Ronald Heifetz (born February 7, 1951) is an academic and author. He is the King Hussein bin Talal Senior Lecturer in Public Leadership, Founding Director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University, and co-founder of Cambridge Leadership Associates. Formerly a clinical instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Heifetz works with leaders in government, nonprofits, and business.

Life and education

Heifetz is a graduate of Columbia University, Harvard Medical School, and the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is also a cellist and former student of Gregor Piatigorsky. His brother is violinist Daniel Heifetz, founder and artistic director of the Heifetz International Music Institute.

Career

He is known for his seminal work during the past three decades on the practice and teaching of leadership; his research focuses on how to build adaptive capacity in societies, businesses, and nonprofits. His book Leadership Without Easy Answers (Belknap/Harvard University Press, 1994) has been translated into many languages and is currently in its thirteenth printing. He also coauthored the bestselling book Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading with Marty Linsky (Harvard Business School Press, 2002). His most recent book, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization (Harvard University Press, 2009). A sequel to Leadership on the Line, it provides a more hands-on approach to identifying personal and organizational practices related to mobilizing organizations around adaptive challenges. His work on adaptive leadership has garnered attention in educational fields by promoting a new approach towards leadership education that focuses on teaching leadership in ways that build capacity to address adaptive leadership problems. Named "case-in-point" (CIP) teaching, this method focuses on implementing aspects of Heifetz's work within the class itself, thereby turning the classroom into a leadership laboratory where learners can analyze on the immediate, relevant leadership dynamics occurring before them. CIP has four main distinctions: 1) authority does not equal leadership, 2) understanding the difference between technical and adaptive challenges, 3) Power (of the individual) vs. progress, and 4) Personality (of the individual) vs. presence (skills & practice). The benefits of Heifetz's CIP model help bridge the current disconnect between learning, teaching, and applying leadership whereby educators may discuss leadership cases or examples within the classroom, but often leave the analysis of impact of personal leadership behaviors to individual reflection outside of the classroom. CIP focuses on bringing leadership to the forefront by analyzing behaviors occurring within the classroom space. To date, a number of leadership educators at universities and organizations across the nation, most notably the University of Minnesota, University of San Diego as well as the Kansas Leadership Center, utilize CIP practices in their work.

Books

**Book Chapters ** **Academic Journals ** **Newspaper or Magazine Articles ** **Trade Journals **