business or professional careers,” while one-fourth of the
mothers were “described as dominating.”
Wealth was much more frequent than abject poverty. One-
fourth of the subjects were physically handicapped. The homes
of the subjects “were exceptionally free of mental illnesses
requiring hospitalization.” As children, the subjects enjoyed
being tutored, “most frequently disliked secondary school,”
and most frequently liked “the prestige college.” A full three-
fourths “expressed dissatisfaction with schools and school
teachers, although four-fifths showed exceptional talent.” Fi-
nally, three-fourths of the subjects were troubled as children—
by poverty, a broken home, difficult parents, financial ups and
downs, physical handicaps, or parental dissatisfaction over their
children’s school failures or vocational choices.
The Goertzels include a statement from T. H. Huxley that
sums up the need to examine and overcome one’s past that I
outlined earlier. Huxley said, “Sit down before fact as a little
child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow
humbly wherever and to whatever abyss nature leads, or you
shall learn nothing.”
There is nothing you can do about your early life now,
except to understand it. You can, however, do everything
about the rest of your life. As John Gardner once said, “The
maturing of any complex talent requires a happy combination
of motivation, character, and opportunity. Most talent remains
undeveloped.”
Universities, unfortunately, are not always the best place to
learn. Too many of them are less places of higher learning than
they are high-class vocational schools. Too many produce
narrow-minded specialists who may be wizards at making
money, but who are unfinished as people. These specialists have
been taught how to do, but they have not learned how to be. In-
On Becoming a Leader