ABSTRACT
This chapter develops a typology of connoisseurs which separates them into three kinds. The first type is connoisseurs of leaders, but who were not necessarily leaders themselves, such as L. Mestrius Plutarch, Niccolo Machiavelli, Giorgio Vasari and Edward Said. The chapter illustrates leaders who were connoisseurs of leadership performance, such as Saint Mary MacKillop of Australia and Frida Kahlo the great Mexican painter. It focuses on leaders who were both connoisseurs of their own performance and of other leaders called leader connoisseurs. The chapter addresses that leadership competence is first about self and may lead to an ability to engage in fine-grain judgments about leaders but may not enable a person to become a leader. This is referred as "Connoisseurs of Leaders". The manifestations of connoisseurship involve self and the construction of self in a dynamic and fluid field of social interaction. From the perspective of George Herbert Mead the self consists of the "I" and the "me".
