The inaugural class in the Woodruff Leadership Academy (WLA) didn't know any of these things when we started back in January. All the answers - and many more, equally arcane and oddly relevant - were in store for us in the ensuing semester.

We were docs and profs, nurses and administrators, some pushing 50 years old and some just clear of 30. What we had in common were a growing set of responsibilities that made it desirable for us to know more than just the inside of our own "silos" in the labyrinth of departments and offices that make up the modern academic health center.

The academy began as a gleam in the eye of Michael Johns, executive vice president for health affairs. Modeled on an in-house corporate leadership program run by General Electric since the mid-1950s, the WLA in action combined classroom sessions, off-site team projects, and weekend retreats that brought physicians out of their white coats and managers out of their blazers and neckties.

Casual dress and mix-and-mingle, team-building exercises prompted many of us to see each other with different eyes or for the first time. The academy was an HR Cuisinart, stirring together an anesthesiology administrator from Emory Crawford Long with an internist from Grady and a pulmonologist from the clinic; a neonatologist from the Children's Center with a sleep researcher from the nursing school and an emergency medicine specialist from Emory University Hospital; a vaccinologist from Yerkes with a transplant surgeon and an attorney from the general counsel's office, and nearly a dozen more.

Over six months, the WLA rotated among a series of sites that exposed different aspects of Emory to the fellows -- from the nursing school's electronically loaded classrooms and comfortable furnishings (a revelation to physicians who, paradoxically, make do with more austere older buildings) to the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, then The Carter Center where we felt pampered, like honest to goodness top-flight corporate executives.

Maybe that feeling was intended.

Promoting leadership and developing leadership potential was identified by the deans and vice presidents at a strategic retreat as one of five key strategic goals. "Where do leaders come from?" Johns asked. "How do you identify those people? How do we promote characteristics of good leaders? How do we identify leaders for the future of the institution?"

Thus, the academy began, with Gary Teal, associate vice president for health affairs, as the organizing genius -- an enthusiastic planner and administrator, whose good humor and down-home parables put the lie to any notion that effective leadership involves putting on airs.

Or, as Johns said in his initial brief to the fellows: "Leadership is about how you submerge your own ego and get those around you to rise up. We have to learn how to work in teams. Everyone has a role to play. There are no unimportant people."

The academy spanned five long weekends, one a month from January to May. In between, the fellows were assigned preparatory readings, sort of an MBA-lite syllabus from the Goizueta Business School. (In fact, one of the fellows, Richard Gitomer, director of primary care for The Emory Clinic, had already earned an executive MBA at Goizueta, while another, Lucky Jain, a neonatologist in the Emory Children's Center, sandwiched in the academy's sessions between for-credit EMBA weekends.) Our 600-page workbook, called FYI: For Your Improvement, was packed with self-assessments, tips, and suggested readings on such things as "competencies" and even the dread "career stallers and stoppers."

Academic director Dennis Redding, a Goizueta faculty member with snowy hair and an infectious smile, fully appreciated the absurdity of so many demands placed on the modern executive. "The mind of a leader has to contain opposites," he said. "The leader must try to stay afloat in a sea of cycles of innovation and new product development that are coming faster and faster. More and more, the new overlaps the old, with ever-shorter periods of time to assimilate and grow comfortable with today's product or process, before it is replaced by tomorrow's new and improved version."

Redding dispelled the myth of the leader as some heroic figure at the apex of a pyramid. "When I started, leaders were people at the top," he said. "Where are the leaders now? Where are they needed? Everywhere."

Charles Hatcher, former director of the Woodruff Health Sciences Center (WHSC), held the class spellbound with a reminder that giants do make a difference. Hatcher recounted some of the legend of Robert Woodruff, longtime leader of Coca Cola. "Without Mr. Woodruff, we certainly would not be where we are," said Hatcher.

The soda magnate's involvement with Emory medicine began in the 1930s, when he noticed that chronic malaria made it impossible to get a good day's work out of his farmhands at Ichauway. That involvement continued for half a century, embracing a long stretch in the 1940s when he personally made good the medical school's deficit, and the defining moment in the 1950s when he helped the school organize The Emory Clinic, now the state's largest group practice.

But for all his epochal contributions, Woodruff likely never gave a more important afternoon to Emory than the day in the early 1950s that he spent playing a round of golf at Augusta with his friend, President Eisenhower. Eisenhower complained to Woodruff that Congress had approved money for a new federal agency and now he would have to find some place to put it in Washington.

"Mr. Woodruff said, 'You could locate that in Atlanta near Emory University.' And President Eisenhower said, 'Well, all federal agencies are in Washington, Bob; I can't very well do that.' And Woodruff said, 'All the more reason, if all of them are in Washington, to start getting them out of there. If you will locate it in Atlanta, near Emory, I will see that you get the site.'"

Thus Woodruff bought for $50,000 the tract of land on which the CDC is currently headquartered and gave it to Emory, so that Emory could give it to the government. The model was the same, though the dollar amounts were much higher, in the late 1980s when Hatcher partnered with the Woodruff Foundation to bring the national headquarters of the American Cancer Society to the Clifton Corridor.

With such personal accounts of historical turning points, Hatcher was one of several undisputed leaders - people who have sat in the hot seat behind the desk where the buck stops - who shared their personal perspectives with the fellows.

For all the business school theory we imbibed, the personal observations and anecdotes are what stick in my mind:

Leaders sweat. Stuart Zola, director of Yerkes, told how he failed to get a requested wake-up call when he came to Emory to interview for his job. "That morning I discovered it is possible to shower, shave, dress, and get to an interview in 18 minutes if you really have to."

Leaders have lives. Jeff Koplan, vice president for academic health affairs and former director of the CDC, said he has never apologized for carving time from each day for his rigorous personal workout program, which includes biking, rowing, and swimming. "I consider it a need."

Leaders follow rules. Marla Salmon, dean of nursing, shared her personal observations about leadership, including maxims such as "Stand for something and live it out!" "Enable the visible success of others," and "Stretch yourself -- all the time."

Early in the semester, fellows braced for a "360-degree review." Each fellow identified five direct reports, five peers, and their immediate superior, who filled out (anonymously) an online questionnaire of strengths and weaknesses, competencies, and gaps. Most of us opened those sealed packets with trepidation and read them with feelings of dread and relief. Like Blanche DuBois, we are all dependent on the kindness of others -- in this case, those who know us best. Yet there were enough zingers among the marshmallows to keep our lips pursed as we read the reviews.

"You have to be thankful they gave you the feedback they did," said Redding, our cordial veteran of the corporate wars. "If you go back and crucify them, you'll never get this kind of feedback again. It's all about 'How do I develop myself? How do I get better?' You don't need to work on this if all you want is to be a C-plus player."

In addition to that online assessment, fellows also did some navel-gazing in the form of another interactive, online tool called the Birkman Method. By answering a series of comparative questions (on the order of, "If given a choice, would I prefer filling out a tax return or planting a tree?") each respondent was given a unique pattern of four color bars. Red stands for expediting (oriented toward short-term, tangible action); green for communicating (sales and marketing, promotion-oriented); blue for planning (focused on long-term strategy and innovation); and yellow for administrating (focused on systems, procedures, and details).

Each fellow then sported a name tag with four color bars. The longest bar, on the bottom, was our "foundation." Perhaps not surprisingly, the longest red foundation bars belonged to the two surgeons in the group -- Mike Johns and WLA fellow Dan Smith, chief of GI and general surgery. Nor was it a surprise when the action-minded Johns periodically ended long discussions by grabbing his name tag and reminding everyone, with a smile: "I'm a red!"

Each WLA weekend included classroom sessions taught by Goizueta faculty focusing on core management skills taught in business school, such as conducting negotiations, making strategic decisions, and marketing new and existing products (such as the Woodruff Health Sciences Center).

As a bonus, Zola and Ronnie Jowers, WHSC vice president for health affairs and chief financial officer, followed substantive lectures to the fellows with bits of legerdemain. Jowers snipped a long string in half, pushed the two ends into his mouth like strands of celery, and began munching, until -- voila! One long string swung free, and he had "chewed them together!"

A burst of applause greeted the feat. Is that how Jowers somehow balances the $1.5 billion budget every year -- with magic? Zola accomplished the same sort of awe-inspiring merger with pieces of rope stuffed into his fist, where they somehow knit seamlessly and fell to his feet, one mysteriously welded whole. Is that how he keeps hundreds of fractious macaques, chimpanzees, and researchers all swinging together in one happy fold?

There's a lot more to this leadership thing than meets the eye, we fellows could only conclude.

For more about the WLA, see http://whsc.emory.edu/woodruff_leadership_academy.cfm.

Ron Sauder is director of media relations, health sciences communications, and a fellow of the inaugural class of the Woodruff Leadership Academy.