vision producer Norman Lear does—that even television is
shaped by business.) Some head leading American companies,
others run their own companies. There are also leaders in the
media and the arts here, people who’ve traded business careers
for nonprofit enterprises, a sports figure, academics, a writer-
psychoanalyst, lawyers, the aforementioned scientist, and Betty
Friedan, the housewife-turned-author-and-feminist-leader
who inspired a revolution. As you may have noticed, I’ve ex-
cluded politicians, because candid politicians are in very short
supply, and I was more interested in ideas than in ideology.
These leaders are by no means ordinary people. They work
out there on the frontier where tomorrow is taking shape, and
they serve here as guides—guides to things as they are and as
they will be, or scouts reporting back with word from the front.
As diverse as they are in terms of background, age, occupations,
and accomplishments, they are in accord on two basic points.
First, they all agree that leaders are made, not born, and
made more by themselves than by any external means. Second,
they agree that no leader sets out to be a leader per se, but
rather to express him- or herself freely and fully. That is, lead-
ers have no interest in proving themselves, but an abiding in-
terest in expressing themselves. The difference is crucial, for
it’s the difference between being driven, as too many people are
today, and leading, as too few people do.
Something else they have in common is that each of these
individuals has continued to grow and develop throughout life.
This is in the best tradition of leadership—people such as
George Bernard Shaw, Charles Darwin, Katharine Hepburn,
Martin Luther, Mahatma Gandhi, and Jean Piaget are a few ex-
amples that spring immediately to mind. Winston Churchill is
said to have jaywalked through life until he was 66.Introduction to the Original Edition, 1989xxxiii0465014088_fm.qxd:0738208175_fm.qxd 12/2/08 2:52 PM Page xxxiii