When Robert Thomas, a prolific scholar within the fields of leadership and organizational change, was researching his previous book, Geeks and Geezers, he interviewed outstanding leaders at the younger and older age range for their professions in order to determine what differences and similarities existed in each age group's professional values. Intrigued by the personal experiences that helped forge these values — experiences that Thomas came to call "crucibles" — he set out to explore how great leaders experience these crucible events, especially as learning opportunities.

The result, Crucibles of Leadership: How to Learn From Experience to Become a Great Leader, uses the metaphor of the crucible — the vessel used by medieval alchemists trying to transform base metals into gold — to explore the transformative, difficult experiences through which a leader develops strategies that enable him to navigate challenging situations. While a crucible experience is difficult by definition, Thomas stresses that warning signs such as an increase in defensive tension, inner turbulence, and anxiety alert us to the fact that we have entered a potentially transformative state. Methods we can use to prepare for such an experience include maintaining a thorough knowledge of our own strengths and weaknesses and preferred methods of learning, as well as an overall willingness to learn from difficult experiences.

One thing all good leaders have in common, writes Thomas, is self-awareness the ability to understand the reasons behind one's actions and emotions. He recommends taking personality assessments such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) or the Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation-Behavior (FIRO-B) periodically (people do change) to gain a quantitative measure of your personality and preferred method of learning and interacting with others. And he also develops the idea of "practicing while you perform," meaning that a leader should acquire and use new leadership skills all the time; there should never be a moment when you are not refining, rethinking, or renovating your leadership skills and techniques. Thomas also believes that all experiences, even those that do not appear related to your area of responsibility or expertise, can be valuable for developing leadership potential.

The book references plenty of personal accounts, from many different types of people. As you'd expect, the crucible experiences of businessmen and financiers such as Robert Galvin, CEO of Motorola, and Jeff Wilke, executive vice president of Amazon.com, dominate. But leadership is universal: it can be applied in a nonprofit context as well as within many extracurricular areas of life. Recognizing that fact, Thomas includes interviews with a number of individuals outside the business world, including choreographer Twyla Tharp, U.S. Army Reserve Sergeant Ling Yun Shao, and retired Hells Angels chapter president Sonny Barger. Their stories demonstrate that while a crucible experience can deeply affect our learning strategies and personal interactions, they do not need to be experienced in a professional setting to have an impact on one's leadership strategies.

Thomas, executive director of Accenture's Institute for High Performance Business and a sometime professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, writes in a clear, unpretentious manner that will appeal to a non-scholarly audience. And while Crucibles does not address nonprofit management issues specifically, the book reinforces perhaps the most important lesson for any leader, regardless of field or sector: Effective leadership is a process of continuous personal development driven by one's embrace of lifelong learning and a desire to lead.