When should you just gather information vs. take action? When should you empower others and build team consensus vs. making the hard decisions alone? How do you balance long-term visions against short-term needs and tactics? Samuel Bacharach, director of ILR's Institute of Workplace Studies and the ILR School's J. McKelvey and A. Grant Professor, says leaders face such daunting questions every day.

Bacharach set the foundation for Cornell's capstone leadership development program, Leading Cornell, Oct. 13. The nine-day course will continue through February 2011.

Whereas past approaches to leadership focused on charisma or heroic qualities, Bacharach believes that leadership is based on a series of pragmatic and proactive skills involving both political and managerial competencies. If leadership were only about personality, charisma and prophetic wisdom, few of us would qualify, he said. But in the final analysis, "leadership is about having the tools for getting things done," he said.

Bacharach is co-founder of the Bacharach Leadership Group, which uses his model of leadership to train "high potentials." Knowing that Bacharach's pragmatic approach has been used by numerous corporations, Vice President for Human Resources Mary Opperman asked him and his group to train high potential leadership at the university as part of the Leading Cornell program.

Working with Chris Halladay and Kathryn Burkgren, both of Cornell's Office of Organizational Effectiveness, Bacharach, who as a member of the Cornell community volunteered his time to this course, worked with his colleagues at BLG to blend their model to the specific needs of Cornell to develop a program that integrates onsite training with online material that Bacharach had previously developed with eCornell. The course is offered to staff who have shown senior leadership potential and have completed the Harold D. Craft Leadership and the Building Teams and Leading Change programs, or their equivalent. Participants must have been nominated for the course by a senior administrator.

The Oct. 13 program began with students and an alumnus describing what Cornell has meant to them. The child of Cornell staff member Sandy Dhmitri, Emma, age 11, said she attended Cornell's Insectapalooza and in the future would like to study environmental science to learn how to protect plants and animals. Andrew Martinez '12 told the group that "Cornell really has made me proud of who I am." Ezra Cornell '70, a financial adviser, former teacher and member of the Cornell Board of Trustees, said: "Leaders need to see the big picture -- to learn and think beyond what is expected."

Cornell's senior administrators also provided their perspectives on leadership. Opperman and President David Skorton said that leaders need resilience, adaptability and the ability both to be a team member yet have the courage of their own convictions. Others discussed higher education, including the future of governance, administration and innovation or their experience leading organizations, such as Chris Proulx, CEO of eCornell.

"Leading Cornell has been a completely engaging experience so far," said Travis Apgar, the Robert G. Engel Associate Dean of Students. "I have already begun to think differently about the work that I do for Cornell, applying Sam's pragmatic approach."

Noted Sarah Hale, associate dean for student services at the Graduate School, "Sam has a tremendous amount of energy and expertise for helping participants learn to implement good ideas. I'm really grateful to him for sharing his enthusiasm with us and to Cornell for providing an opportunity for us to network with others and develop skills that will help us achieve the university's objectives in a collegial and positive way."

"I think we often underestimate the complexity of higher education, with its multiple constituencies, numerous silos and multiple agendas," Bacharach said. "I often hear that academia is not part of the real world. Nonsense. In all sectors of our economy and society we need a leadership culture that emphasizes the pragmatics of getting things done. We've got to get beyond the superhero myth and bring leadership out of the clouds. As for working with Cornell, what could be more joyous and difficult than working within your own family?"