and the right questions at the right time. Each of these leaders
seems to have overcome whatever impediments he or she con-
tained, and in my dialogues with them (they were not inter-
views in the ordinary sense) we searched not for pat answers to
standard questions, but for some truths about leadership. In a
sense, we did together what each of them had already done in-
dividually in the process of finding his or her own means of
full self-expression.
Plato argued that learning is basically recovery or recollec-
tion—that in the same way bears and lions instinctively know
everything they need to know to live and merely do it, each of
us does, too. But in our case, what we need to know gets lost in
what we are told we should know. So learning is simply a mat-
ter of remembering what is important. As Jung said, psycho-
analysis is less a form of healing than a form of learning.
So we already know what we need to know, but each of us
must recover that basic knowledge, and such recovery in-
evitably begins with questions. I had some questions in mind as
I started each dialogue:- What do you believe are the qualities of leadership?
- What experiences were vital to your development?
- What were the turning points in your life?
- What role has failure played in your life?
- How do you learn?
- Are there people in your life, or in general, whom you
particularly admire? - What can organizations do to encourage or stifle leaders?
Basic as these questions are, they generated wide-ranging,
free-wheeling answers, which, in turn, led to an exploration ofIntroduction to the Original Edition, 1989xxxv0465014088_fm.qxd:0738208175_fm.qxd 12/2/08 2:52 PM Page xxxv