ABSTRACT
I have always been amazed to find out what has happened in leaders’ lives to make them who they have become. Meeting Lech Walesa in Korea was a very profound experience for me. When he told us that he was a boxer growing up, it made so much sense to me in terms of how he dealt with the former Soviet Union. Great boxers know when to go in and fight and when to cover up. He was a master of this trade. Then when I read Nelson Mandela’s biography I discovered that he too was a trained boxer. I was convinced with a sample of just two, that I had my boxer theory of leadership. Both of these men stood toe to toe with awesome regimes that had all of the institutional power, and yet they took the punches and survived.
