High Flyers: Developing the Next Generation of Leaders.(Review)

High Flyers: Developing the Next Generation of Leaders Morgan W. McCall, Jr. Harvard Business School Press, 1998 254 pp., $27.95, hardcover

Reviewed by Paula Phillips Carson, University of SW Louisiana

Leaders are not necessarily born with the "right stuff" ... and, if they are not, the "right stuff" can be effectively learned ... and, it can be most effectively learned though experience in the work environment. McCall's treatise on executive development begins with these basic assumptions, and ambitiously sets out to demonstrate how and why these things are true.

Chapter 1 discusses what development is, or more importantly, what development is not. It is persuasively argued that traditional executive training programs do not (completely) capture the concept. Instead, the best classroom for development is on-the-job experience. To McCall, experience is not …