Managers and Leaders • HBR C LASSIC
find a harmony between what they expect and
what they are able to realize from life.
But suppose the pains of separation are amplified by a combination of parental demands
and individual needs to the degree that a sense
of isolation, of being special, or of wariness disrupts the bonds that attach children to parents
and other authority figures? Given a special
aptitude under such conditions, the person becomes deeply involved in his or her inner
world at the expense of interest in the outer
world. For such a person, self-esteem no longer
depends solely on positive attachments and
real rewards. A form of self-reliance takes hold
along with expectations of performance and
achievement, and perhaps even the desire to
do great works.
Such self-perceptions can come to nothing
if the individual’s talents are negligible. Even
with strong talents, there are no guarantees
that achievement will follow, let alone that the
end result will be for good rather than evil.
Other factor s enter into development as well.
For one, leaders are like artists and other
gifted people who often struggle with neuroses; their ability to function varies considerably
even over the short run, and some potential
leaders lose the struggle altogether. Also, beyond early childhood, the development patterns that affect managers and leaders involve
the selective influence of particular people.
Managerial personalities form moderate and
widely distributed attachments. Leaders, on
the other hand, establish, and also break off,
intensive one-to-one relationships.
It is a common observation that people with
great talents are often indifferent students. No
one, for example, could have predicted Einstein’s great achievements on the basis of his
mediocre record in school. The reason for mediocrity is obviously not the absence of ability.
It may result, instead, from self-absorption and
the inability to pay attention to the ordinary
tasks at hand. The only sure way an individual
can interrupt reverie-like preoccupation and
self-absorption is to form a deep attachment to
a great teacher or other person who understands and has the ability to communicate
with the gifted individual.
Whether gifted individuals find what they
need in one-to-one relationships depends on
the availability of teachers, possibly parental
surrogates, whose strengths lie in cultivating
talent. Fortunately, when generations meet
harvard business review • march–april 1992
and the self-selections occur, we learn more
about how to develop leaders and how talented people of different generations influence each other.
While apparently destined for mediocre careers, people who form important one-to-one
apprenticeship relationships often are able to
accelerate and intensify their development.
The psychological readiness of an individual to
benefit from such a relationship depends on
some experience in life that forces that person
to turn inward.
Consider Dwight Eisenhower, whose early
career in the army foreshadowed very little
about his future development. During World
War I, while some of his West Point classmates
were already experiencing the war firsthand in
France, Eisenhower felt “embedded in the monotony and unsought safety of the Zone of the
Interior…that was intolerable punishment.”6
Shortly after World War I, Eisenhower, then
a young officer somewhat pessimistic about
his career chances, asked for a transfer to Panama to work under General Fox Connor, a senior officer whom he admired. The army
turned down his request. This setback was very
much on Eisenhower’s mind when Ikey, his
first born son, succumbed to influenza.
Through some sense of responsibility for its
own, the army then transferred Eisenhower to
Panama, where he took up his duties under
General Connor with the shadow of his lost
son very much upon him.
In a relationship with the kind of father he
would have wanted to be, Eisenhower reverted
to being the son he had lost. And in this highly
charged situation, he began to learn from his
teacher. General Connor offered, and Eisenhower gladly took, a magnificent tutorial on
the military. The effects of this relationship on
Eisenhower cannot be measured quantitatively, but in examining his career path from
that point, one cannot overestimate its significance.
As Eisenhower wrote later about Connor,
“Life with General Connor was a sort of graduate school in military affairs and the humanities, leavened by a man who was experienced
in his knowledge of men and their conduct. I
can never adequately express my gratitude to
this one gentleman.…In a lifetime of association with great and good men, he is the one
more or less invisible figure to whom I owe an
incalculable debt.”7
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