Beyond Second Grade

My lack of response on my first day of school to the calls of the two class leaders proved to be a true indicator. I never developed any interest in following anyone else's lead, and I never had any interest in getting other people to follow my lead.  I never joined a political party or became part of an ideological movement. An observer rather than a participant, the first years of my career were spent as a securities analyst and portfolio manager. Friendship was a different matter. I joined social clubs, and my guess is that I had a normal complement of close friends, friends, acquaintances, and groups of friends, of both sexes.

In the latter years of my career, I recruited many people for commercial projects, as I started businesses myself and helped others start and build businesses. For reasons that I never really understood, I proved to be consistently effective in attracting people and capital. I was enlisting support for the project at hand, not for me personally. If I took an active role in a business, it was almost invariably as chairman or chairman and chief executive officer, never as president or president and chief operating officer. Although many of the people with whom I worked and co-invested became good friends, these friendships were not, in my mind, based on a leader/follower relationship.