Leadership Insights for Wizards and Witches

View leadership through a cultural context.

Learning how to lead and to understand leadership is easier for business students if their lessons draw context from popular culture. Author and professor Aditya Simha, who says he’s read J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series “50 or 60” times, finds that the wizarding world offers a magical way to teach his students about leadership. For example, the headmaster of the Hogwarts school, Albus Dumbledore, exemplifies emotional intelligence, while the evil Lord Voldemort demonstrates the misuse of coercive power.

Effective leaders know their personality type, strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately, many leadership personality assessments that developed over time are meaningless. For example, the “blood-group” theory, which some Asian firms still use unofficially, echoes the wizarding world’s distinction between the “pure-blood” descendants of wizards and witches versus the “mudbloods” of mixed magical and muggle parentage. Harry opposes this prejudiced view, but it’s popular with Draco Malfoy and his father. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which brings to mind the phony...