How, then, do we resolve the paradox? This way: leaders learn from others, but they are not made by others. This is the distinguishing mark of leaders, The paradox becomes a dialectic. The self and the other synthesize through self-invention.
What that means is that here and now, true learning must often be preceded by unlearning, because we are taught by our parents and teachers and friends how to go along, to measure up to their standards, rather than allowed to be ourselves.
Alfred Gottschalk, the president of Hebrew Union College, told me, 'The hardest thing I've had to do is convey to children, my own and others, the necessity of coming to terms with themselves. Their interests aren't deep. They don't think about things. They accept what they're told and what they read or see on TV. They're conformists. They accept the dictates of fashion"
Asked to define his philosophy, Gottschalk said, "I value the need for the individual to feel unique and for the collective to remain hospitable to diversity. I believe in unity without uniformity and in man's capacity to redeem himself."
Given the pressures from our parents and the pressures from our peers, how does any one of us manage to emerge as a sane much less productive adult.?
William James wrote, in The Principles of Psychology,
A man's Self is the sum total of all that he can call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank account. All these things give him the same emotions. If they wax and prosper, he feels triumphant if they dwindle and die away, he feels cast down.
It's hard to conceive of a more apt description of today's yuppies, those most conspicuous consumers. But as James concludes, "....our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do."
The leader begins, then, by backing himself, inspiring him- self, trusting himself, and ultimately inspires others by being trustworthy.
Famed psychoanalyst Erik Erikson has divided life into eight stages that are useful to look at during our examination of self-invention: