The Art and Science of Heroism and Heroic Leadership

Book excerpt: Heroism is a rich, elusive phenomenon. Any adequate understanding of heroic behavior requires a new type of scholarly imagination, one that taps into human artistic sensibilities as much as it does the rigors of scientific inquiry. In an important sense, we invoke a meta-version of the call to heroic imagination by Franco, Blau, and Zimbardo (2011), who describe such imagination “as a mind-set” and “a collection of attitudes” (p. 13) that can steer everyday people toward heroic achievement. This eBook also merges our understanding of heroism with heroic leadership, demonstrating that heroic leadership applies the principles of heroism in moving groups toward noble collective goals. This eBook represents an effort by a distinguished group of authors to unleash their own creative mindsets, attitudes, and imaginations in their scholarship on heroism and heroic leadership.