ground, experience, and vocation, but they have in common a
passion for the promises of life and the ability to express them-
selves fully and freely. As you will see, full, free self-expression
is the essence of leadership. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said,
“The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression.”
On Becoming a Leaderis based on the assumption that leaders
are people who are able to express themselves fully. By this I
mean that they know who they are, what their strengths and
weaknesses are, and how to fully deploy their strengths
and compensate for their weaknesses. They also know what
they want, why they want it, and how to communicate what
they want to others, in order to gain their cooperation and
support. Finally, they know how to achieve their goals. The key
to full self-expression is understanding one’s self and the world,
and the key to understanding is learning—from one’s own life
and experience.
Becoming a leader isn’t easy, just as becoming a doctor or a
poet isn’t easy, and those who claim otherwise are fooling them-
selves. But learning to lead is a lot easier than most of us think it
is, because each of us contains the capacity for leadership. In
fact, almost every one of us can point to some leadership experi-
ence. Maybe the experience wasn’t running a company, or gov-
erning a state, but as Harlan Cleveland wrote in The Knowledge
Executive,The aristocracy of achievement is numerous and pervasive....
They may be leaders in politics or business or agriculture or labor
or law or education or journalism or religion or affirmative action
or community housing, or any policy issue from abortion to the
municipal zoo.... Their writ may run to community affairs, to
national decisions or global issues, to a whole multinationalIntroduction to the Original Edition, 1989xxxi0465014088_fm.qxd:0738208175_fm.qxd 12/2/08 2:52 PM Page xxxi