Become: The Path to Purposeful Leadership

THE TECHNICAL VERSUS THE LEADERSHIP DILEMMA

Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work.

—Seth Godin, former dot-com executive and author

In the summer of 1972, the world sat transfixed and entertained by, of all things, the World Chess Championship between defending champion Boris Spassky of the then Soviet Union and his U.S. challenger, Bobby Fischer. It was sports, politics, theater, and weirdness all at the same time.

Decades later, I was seated beside a man named James Slater on a commercial flight from London to the United States. At the time, I was a young supervisor in the financial services industry, ...