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Don Jenkins, a star event planner at a large firm, resigns to take a position at a boutique firm. However, Don may have made some mistakes when departing that could be trouble later on down the road. The case can be used to teach the business and legal aspects of employee departures and explore turnover dynamics in professional service organizations.

Describes the governance issues facing the Board of Governors of the American Red Cross. After a series of issues--FDA consent decree on its blood operations; the response to 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina--the Red Cross board was under pressure to fix its governance from the public, the media, and from Congress. Describes the Red Cross governance structure and practices in place and the process used to examine them.

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This case addresses the issues of leadership and change management in the process of transforming an industry through an innovative public-private partnership approach to policy making. In 2005, the Governor of Arizona issued an Executive Order to create a roadmap for the state to achieve statewide electronic health data exchange between various entities in the health care delivery system. The Roadmap development project, a key initiative for Arizona, was led primarily by the State CIO. Being one of the first States to develop a statewide Roadmap, Arizona was being recognized as a national leader in the area of healthcare IT. While CIO and his team had successfully initiated a large-scale transformation within the state, they were now faced with the challenge of transforming the blueprint into reality. This case documents the process of creating this Roadmap and the issues that need to be addressed to achieve a true and lasting transformation in the healthcare arena.

By watching a colleague assemble diverse, high-performing teams, the CEO of the Boston Consulting Group learned the art of nurturing individual strengths and steering team members away from tasks that would expose their weaknesses.

A detached and impassive executive may seem like the corporate decision-making ideal, but people make better choices when they're experiencing intense emotions, according to new research.

Unless you're a hermit, you can't avoid relationships. And your professional career certainly won't go anywhere if you don't know how to build strong, positive connections. Leaders need to connect deeply with followers if they hope to engage and inspire them. Despite the importance of interpersonal dynamics in the workplace, solid research on the topic is only now beginning to emerge--and psychologist John M. Gottman, executive director of the Relationship Research Institute, is leading the way. His research shows that how we behave at work is closely related to how we behave at home. Few people understand personal relationships better than Gottman, who has studied thousands of married couples for the past 35 years. He and his colleagues use video cameras, heart monitors, and other biofeedback equipment to measure what goes on when couples experience moments of either conflict or closeness. By mathematically analyzing the data, Gottman has provided hard scientific evidence for what makes good relationships. In this interview with HBR senior editor Diane Coutu, Gottman emphasizes that successful couples look for ways to accentuate the positive: They try to say yes as often as possible. Even thriving relationships, however, still have room for conflict. Individuals embrace it as a way to work through essential personality differences. Gottman also points out that good relationships aren't about clear communication--they're about small moments of attachment and intimacy. Still, he warns, too much of a good thing can be a menace in the workplace, where simple friendships can spill over into emotional affairs.

A well told story's power to captivate and inspire people has been recognized for thousands of years. Peter Guber is in the business of creating compelling stories: He has headed several entertainment companies--including Sony Pictures, PolyGram, and Columbia Pictures--and produced Rain Man, Batman, and The Color Purple, among many other movies. In this article, he offers a method for effectively exercising that power. For a story to enrapture its listeners, says Guber, it must be true to the teller, embodying his or her deepest values and conveying them with candor; true to the audience, delivering on the promise that it will be worth people's time by acknowledging listeners' needs and involving them in the narrative; true to the moment, appropriately matching the context--whether it's an address to 2,000 customers or a chat with a colleague over drinks--yet flexible enough to allow for improvisation; and true to the mission, conveying the teller's passion for the worthy endeavor that the story illustrates and enlisting support for it. In this article, Guber's advice--distilled not only from his years in the entertainment industry but also from an intense discussion over dinner one evening with storytelling experts from various walks of life--is illustrated with numerous examples of effective storytelling from business and elsewhere. Perhaps the most startling is a colorful anecdote about how Guber's own impromptu use of storytelling, while standing on the deck of a ship in Havana harbor, won Fidel Castro's grudging support for a film project.

Countless studies, workshops, and books have focused on leaders--the charismatic ones, the retiring ones, even the crooked ones. Virtually no literature exists about followers, however, and the little that can be found tends to depict subordinates as an amorphous group or explain their behavior in the context of leaders' development. Some works even fail to sufficiently distinguish among varying types of followers--barely registering the fact that those who tag along mindlessly are a breed apart from those who are deeply devoted and consciously, actively involved. These distinctions have critical implications for the way leaders should lead and managers should manage, according to Kellerman, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Additionally, today's followers are influenced by a range of cultural and technological changes that have affected what they want and how they view and communicate with their ostensible leaders. In this article, Kellerman explores the evolving dynamic between leaders and subordinates and offers a typology that managers can use to determine and appreciate how their followers are different from one another. Using the level of engagement with a leader or group as a defining factor, the author segments followers into five types: Isolates are completely detached, they passively support the status quo with their inaction. Bystanders are free riders who are somewhat detached, depending on their self-interests. Participants are engaged enough to invest some of their own time and money to make an impact. Activists are very much engaged, heavily invested in people and process, and eager to demonstrate their support or opposition. And diehards are so engaged they're willing to go down with the ship--or throw the captain overboard.

What are the differences between being a good tactical leader and being a good strategic leader? As he nears retirement, Robert Lincoln muses about his successor at Lincoln Industries. The case describes the backgrounds of four potential successors, all of whom are tactically astute and very competent general managers. Lincoln realizes that the company is at a crossroads and wonders what it would take for his potential successors to graduate from being good tactical leaders to effective strategic leaders.

In Differences at Work: Emily (A) HBS Case No. 9-408-014 Emily, a private equity analyst, reads disturbing, sexually focused emails written about her by work colleagues and acquaintances after they all attended a work-related social event. Emily debates what she should do.

In Differences at Work: Jason (A) HBS Case No. 9-408-016 Jason is a member of his firm's recruiting team, which has a mandate to create a more diverse workforce. When the group decides to interview a candidate based on the candidate's race, Jason wonders whether they made the right decision and how, in general, diversity goals should be achieved.

Differences at Work: Jenny (A) HBS Case No. 9-408-017 is set in Amsterdam. Accompanied by her boss, Jenny is pitching a marketing engagement, but the prospective client keeps making comments about how attractive he finds her.

In Differences at Work: Emily (B) HBS Case No. 9-408-046 Emily considers whether to file a formal complaint with her Human Resources department about the emails but ultimately decides to confront the culprits herself, beginning by sending an email to one of her colleagues. He immediately apologizes.

In Differences at Work: Emily (C) HBS Case No. 9-408-047 describes how the original email author apologizes to her acknowledging that his behavior was extremely inappropriate. While Emily accepts the apology, she still forwards the email on to her boss with a note saying that she felt after reading the email that she could not remain quiet. Her boss never responds. Later, after Emily has left the firm, she asks her boss about his inaction.

In Differences at Work: Jason (B) HBS Case No. 9-408-049 Jason decides that his firm should have a more articulated position that everyone in the firm understands about why diversity benefits the firm instead of pursing diversity because it feels like the "right" thing to do.

In Differences at Work: Jenny (B) HBS Case No. 9-408-050, we learn that Jenny's boss is woman who thought the entire incident was funny. Jenny wonders whether to confront her boss about her discomfort with the situation.

In Differences at Work: Will (A), HBS Case No. 9-408-013 is set in London. Will, a gay man, must decide how to react to a senior colleague's question that assumes he is heterosexual. In the rest of Will's life, he does not keep his sexual orientation a secret.

In Differences at Work: Erica (A) HBS Case No. 9-408-015 Erica, a junior sales person, has just been offered the opportunity to attend an important client dinner. Later, Erica learns that she received the invitation because of her race.

In Differences at Work: Martin (A) HBS Case No. 9-408-019 is set in Italy. Martin, a gay man who has not disclosed his sexual orientation at his Italian firm, witnesses his division manager deliver a homophobic comment to his boss. He wonders what he should do.