Most of us think of leaders as courageous risk takers, orchestrators of major events-in a word, heroes. Yet while such figures are inspiring and admirable, Harvard Business School Professor Joseph Badaracco argues that their larger-than-life accomplishments are simply not what makes the world work. What does, he says, is the sum of millions of small yet consequential decisions that men and women working far from the limelight make every day: how a line worker for a pharmaceutical company responds when he discovers a defect in a product's safety seal; how a manager deals with a valued employee suspected of stealing; how a trader handles a transaction error that will cost a client money.

Badaracco calls them "quiet leaders"-people who choose responsible, behind-the-scenes action over public heroism to resolve tough leadership challenges. These individuals don't fit the stereotype of the bold and gutsy leader, and they don't want to. What they want is to do the "right thing" for their organizations, their coworkers, and themselves-but inconspicuously and without casualties. They do so by being baldly realistic about the complexities of their own motives and those of the dilemmas they face. In today's fast and fluid business world, nothing is as it seems. And they know it.