This chapter talks about the importance of intellectual excellence in leadership. Intellectual curiosity and breadth of knowledge are as important in a political leader as tactile skills in a surgeon or strength in an athlete. Experience over the past century in the business and political sectors offers countless illustrations of these truths, but one historical episode stands out: the events of the late 1930s and early 1940s surrounding the advent of nuclear energy and the decision to build an atomic bomb. Yet Franklin Delano Roosevelt, because of his background, education, and temperament, kept an open mind for the new currents in science and culture around him, whereas, Hitler, as a result of his background and ideology, deliberately shut himself off from new and challenging ideas. The differing fates of the American and German bomb projects reveal how important curiosity, education, and the virtue of intellectual excellence are to outstanding leadership.

Controlled Vocabulary Terms

education; leader; leadership