Leadership Is an Art

First published in 1987, Leadership Is an Art is a nonfiction work by Max De Pree, who served as CEO and later board chairman of Herman Miller, Inc., a prominent American furniture company founded in 1923 by his father, D. J. De Pree. Rather than offering a manual of techniques, De Pree presents interconnected essays exploring the philosophy, obligations, and character of leadership, drawing on stories from Herman Miller's history to argue that leadership is rooted in relationships, service, and a belief in the diverse gifts of every person.

In a Preface written for the 2004 edition, De Pree reflects on becoming especially active as a mentor to young leaders, a role he considers one of a leader's chief duties. He identifies three themes that readers' letters have most frequently affirmed: integrity, which he calls a preserving principle of the free-market system; the skill of building and nurturing relationships, which he frames as primarily a matter of the heart; and community building, the only context in which people can set meaningful goals, grow, forgive, and reach their potential. In a Foreword, James O'Toole of the University of Southern California traces Herman Miller's exceptional financial performance and credits its innovativeness to the De Pree family's willingness to grant world-class designers complete creative freedom. O'Toole describes the Scanlon Plan, a participative management system in which workers suggest productivity improvements and share in the resulting financial gains, and highlights the company's Silver Parachutes, severance protections extended to all employees with over two years of service.

De Pree defines his subject as the art of leadership: "liberating people to do what is required of them in the most effective and humane way possible" (1). He describes leadership as more tribal than scientific, more a weaving of relationships than an accumulation of information, and invites readers to engage actively with the text and "finish" it according to their own experiences.

The first essay introduces a foundational concept through a story from De Pree's father. When a millwright, the key worker responsible for the factory's steam-driven machinery, died, D.J. visited the family and discovered that the man had also been a poet whose widow read his verse aloud. The question that has stayed with the De Pree family for decades is whether the man was a poet who did millwright's work or a millwright who wrote poetry. De Pree draws from this the principle that leaders must recognize the diversity of people's gifts, enabling organizations to provide meaning and fulfillment in the workplace.

In "What Is Leadership?," De Pree lays out a comprehensive framework. A leader's first responsibility is to define reality; the last is to say thank you. In between, the leader must become a servant and a debtor. The signs of outstanding leadership appear not in the leader but in the followers: whether they are reaching their potential, learning, serving, and managing conflict with grace. Drawing on Robert Greenleaf's concept of servant leadership, De Pree frames leadership as stewardship organized around obligations. Leaders owe their institutions vital financial health, clear values, the development of future leaders, openness to contrary opinions, a covenant binding people together, and space for people to exercise their gifts. He introduces momentum as a palpable feeling that a group's lives and work move toward a legitimate goal, and he distinguishes between efficiency and effectiveness. He also previews two ideas developed later: roving leadership, in which people with situational competence lead regardless of rank, and civility, the ability to distinguish what is truly healthy from what merely appears to be living.

"Participative Premises" argues that participative management arises not from policy manuals but from a genuine belief in people's potential. De Pree clarifies that it is not democratic: "Having a say differs from having a vote" (25). He proposes five steps for building healthy relationships, including respecting diverse gifts, recognizing that beliefs precede policy, agreeing on the rights of work, distinguishing between contracts and covenants, and understanding that relationships matter more than structures.

In "Theory Fastball," De Pree redefines work using the metaphor of pitchers and catchers, reasoning that every great pitcher needs an outstanding catcher and the team's needs are best met by meeting individuals' needs. He enumerates eight rights essential to work, including the right to be needed, involved, accountable, and to make a commitment. "Roving Leadership" illustrates situational leadership through an Easter Sunday emergency in which a man in a crowded church has a severe allergic reaction. While the clergy do nothing, a young paramedic opens the man's airway, doctors from the congregation assist, and others inform the man's wife and calm frightened children. De Pree notes that the hierarchy did not respond; roving leaders with relevant competence took charge.

"Intimacy" argues that closeness with one's work is the foundation of competence. De Pree draws a detailed contrast between contractual relationships, which break down under conflict and change, and covenantal relationships, which rest on shared commitment to ideas, values, and goals. He quotes Alexander Solzhenitsyn's 1978 Harvard address, published as A World Split Apart, warning that purely legalistic relationships create spiritual mediocrity. His personal goal for Herman Miller is that people will see them as a group working within a covenantal relationship and say, "Those folks are a gift to the spirit" (62).

"Whither Capitalism?" diagnoses capitalism's central problem as exclusivity and proposes an inclusive approach grounded in marks of inclusion such as being needed, involved, and fairly compensated. "Giant Tales" profiles five individuals from Herman Miller's history who exemplify outsized contribution, including designer George Nelson, who persuaded D.J. to add Charles Eames's furniture to the company's line despite sharing his own limited royalty opportunity, and D.J. himself, who had the insight to abandon himself to the gifts of designers he did not fully understand.

"Tribal Storytelling" uses a parable about electric lights replacing tribal fires in Nigeria to argue that organizations must preserve their values through storytelling. De Pree catalogues Herman Miller's core values, from research-driven design to deep commitment to the Scanlon Plan, and warns that successful companies tend toward bureaucracy unless tribal storytellers work constantly at renewal. "Who Owns This Place?" examines corporate ownership and describes Herman Miller's evolution toward employee ownership, where all full-time regular U.S. employees with one year of service are stockholders.

"Communicate!" frames communication as an ethical obligation that serves two functions: It educates by drawing out awareness of what working together means, and it liberates by freeing people to carry out their responsibilities. "Pink Ice in the Urinal" introduces the concept of entropy, which De Pree defines as the tendency of everything to deteriorate, and lists warning signals including tendencies toward superficiality, dark tension among key people, cessation of tribal stories, and leaders who seek control rather than liberation. "What's Next?" addresses future-oriented performance reviews for leaders, providing detailed evaluation questions and closing with Mahatma Gandhi's seven sins as a lens for reviewing performance.

In the remaining essays, De Pree argues that corporate facilities should express a company's values; outlines criteria for selecting future leaders, emphasizing integrity and vision; contends that emotional authenticity is essential to leadership, recounting his inability to finish reading a letter from the mother of an employee with a disability without breaking down; and urges leaders to strive for completeness, presenting principles including that covenants complete contracts and joy is an essential ingredient leaders are obligated to provide.

The book closes with a parable about the architect Sir Christopher Wren. Forced to add an unnecessary row of columns to a structure, Wren left a deliberate gap between the column tops and the beams above, invisible from the ground. The beam has never sagged. The columns support nothing but Wren's conviction. De Pree concludes that leadership is much more an art, a belief, and a condition of the heart than a set of things to do.