Elites: Can You Rise to the Top Without Losing Your Soul?

Douglas Board was hot-housed from an early age to be a member of the elite: the tiny coterie of people who run organizations, professions, interest groups, communities, and, at the highest level, countries. The training worked, and he has been chair of a household-name charity, treasurer of another, and deputy chair of a board-level consultancy. Elites are also his specialist subject: he has a doctorate in selection for senior roles and, as a head-hunter and executive coach, he has spent three decades recruiting and mentoring new members of the top tier.

In this revelatory book – part how-to guide, part detective story of ideas – he analyses 10 traps which hold back those on the upper rungs of the ladder from making it to the top and undermine their self-esteem. He also asks whether that final push to the top is worth it. Writing passionately from his own experience, Board argues that success in the fullest sense isn’t about winning the most glittering material prizes. For him, true fulfillment demands an adventure into the unknown inside ourselves: why do we seek what we seek? The answers can be surprising.