View From the Top: An Inside Look at How People in Power See and Shape the World

Chapter 2Leadership Begins at 20Beyond Bootstraps and Boarding School

When most people think of powerful leaders, they think of someone like Bob Haas. His great-great-granduncle was Levi Strauss, the legendary businessman who first manufactured blue jeans. By the time Haas took the reins of the company, leadership of Levi Strauss & Co. had remained in family hands for at least four generations. While growing up, his father was the CEO, and the Haases vacationed every summer with the family of Robert McNamara, who would become secretary of defense. Haas told me that this early and regular exposure to people at the higher levels of society kept him from being starstruck as he ascended his own professional heights.

Certainly this sounds to most of us like a charmed life. After all, when you vacation with the secretary of defense, you doubtless also have the best health care, the finest education, and unmatched opportunities. But as it turns out, a privileged childhood is actually a poor predictor of becoming a senior leader. Bob Haas is, in fact, the exception to the rule. I found that virtually all formative experiences in the early lives of leaders are more ordinary than extraordinary.

Before great leaders reach the halls of power, they are “protoleaders,” young people with talent and opportunity but yet untested. It is still up to them to make the most of what resources they possess. Some, like Haas, are born with lots of resources. More typical, however, is the life of John ...