The authors draw on their four-year experience teaching "Profiles in Leadership," a freshmen course where students read and discuss the biographies of great leaders. According to student evaluations, essay question answers, and professors' observations, students learn a great deal from this process. For example, most freshmen enter college believing that leaders (e.g. Henry Ford, Mahatma Gandhi) are saint-like heroes. This course forces students to face the weaknesses of great people and develop a more realistic view of leadership. Other student insights include: (1) leaders usually fail and then learn from their mistakes, and (2) leadership is paradoxically social and solitary.
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