A leadership scholar talks about the essential qualities of a leader and how complexity keeps humanity moving forward.
Richard Couto
Featured Leadership Topics
Understand Leadership
“An effective leader inspires others to take their own initiative, not follow, but to take their own initiative”
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Influences and Impacts
“I talked to my father once about wanting to be a copilot when I grew up and he said ‘why not a pilot?’ Those are the kinds of questions my father would ask. ”
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Storytelling
“The job description was just – I mean I couldn’t believe it. The school was aimed at the moral, as well as the cognitive development of students, a heavy emphasis on experiential education, interdisciplinary.”
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About Richard Couto
Before receiving his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Kentucky in 1974, Richard Couto spent several years as a Roman Catholic Brother. Couto held a number of university appointments, including:
- Director, Center for Health Services, Vanderbilt University (1975–88)
- Founding faculty member, Jepson School of Leadership Studies, University of Richmond (1991–2002)
- Higher education senior research fellow, James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership, University of Maryland (1996–98)
- Founding faculty member, Ph.D. program in leadership and change, Antioch University (2002–08)
Couto published 14 books and 73 articles and book chapters between 1975 and 2015, ranging from community empowerment and civic engagement, leadership, and service learning and public scholarship—which he developed and promoted before those practices became widespread. He won numerous awards, including:
- 2012 Leadership Book Award for Scholarship for Political and Civic Leadership: A Reference Handbook
- 2002 Servant Leader Award, Jepson School of Leadership Studies
- 2000 Virginia A. Hodgkinson Research Prize of the Independent Sector for Making Democracy Work Better
- 1992 Outstanding Book for Ain’t Nobody Gonna Turn Me Round
Born or Made?
“Well, we have to start with the basics: willing to take initiative, some sense of values, some sense of the common good. Now once you get past those, what makes some initiatives effective, successful, and others not in that they are not all bound to the leader, obviously; it’s the context. Why was Rosa Parks’ effort successful but a woman six months earlier was not successful? It has to do with the characteristics of the people.”
Leaders Are Readers
“One of the primary reasons I write is to give voice to people who I think have a very interesting story that touches on the heart of who we think we are as Americans.”
Books I Recommend
- The Emperor's New Clothes
—by Hans Christian Andersen
(Fiction; Fairy Tale) - The Powers to Lead
—by Joseph Nye
(Non-Fiction; Leadership) - A Very Short Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book About Studying Leadership
—by Brad Jackson
(Non-Fiction; Leadership) - Leadership and the New Science
—by Margaret Wheatley
(Non-Fiction; Leadership) - Leadership Without Easy Answers
—by Ron Heifetz's
(Non-Fiction; Leadership) - Leading Minds
—by Howard Gardner
(Non-Fiction; Biography) - Leadership for the Twenty-First Century
—by Joseph C. Rost
(Non-Fiction; Leadership) - The Journey to the East
—by Hermann Hess
(Fiction; Classics) - The Call of Service
—by Robert Coles
(Non-Fiction; Philosophy)
Books I’ve Written
- Political and Civil Leadership: A Reference Handbook
- Making Democracy Work Better
- Ain't Nobody Gonna Turn Me Round: The Pursuit of Racial Justice in the Rural South
- Lifting the Veil: A Political History of Struggles for Emancipation
- To Give Their Gifts: Health, Community, and Democracy
- Mending Broken Promises: Justice for Children at Risk
- Reflections on Leadership
