Leadership: A Call to Greatness!

Destiny isn't something created by the cunning to lead the clueless --it does exist.

Leadership: A Call to Greatness

When’s the last time you felt the call to greatness, when you were convinced of your capacity and not merely gripped by its power? As leaders, we must not only know what makes others tick. We must also know how to detonate them until they exceed their perceived capacity. Successful leaders leverage this ability. They understand that leadership involves more than hunkering down and grinding it out for dwindling shares of shredded markets. They understand that leadership is a call to greatness. This understanding guides their interactions with others.

Chief Christening Officer (CCO)

Seeing leadership as a call to greatness makes us chief christening officers of our organizations. We must be the first to praise and willing to promote others and their potential. Doing so isn’t about dreaming vainly or leading blindly, indifferent to operational realities. On the contrary, the call to greatness is operational and emotional. Operationally, we must arm others with job essentials. Emotionally, however, we must convince them of their ability to do more with less and better than their best. How many leaders lead so? How many of us are so realistic that we shun the fantastic on principle until it appears in persons who understand that leadership is a call to greatness. (Think Steve Jobs). These leaders are CCO’s of their companies and communities!

Roles and Ranges

Seeing leadership as a call to greatness involves more than role-fulfillment. On the contrary, we must fulfill our roles in ways that call others to greatness instead. We must see what others don‘t and encourage what they envision as possible. We must be cheer-leaders, not merely chore-givers and task-masters. We must inspire greatness even as we assign roles because we believe in others capacity.

This approach surpasses benchmarking around obedience to organizational constraints. Seeing leadership as a call to greatness enables us to fulfill our roles in ways that promote organizational self-actualization. In this regard, most leaders fail. They can’t call others to greatness because they haven’t called themselves. They can’t christen others because they haven’t christened themselves. Characteristically, they lack a sense of destiny.

Duty versus Destiny

Duty versus destiny is a diabolical dichotomy, which has been problematized indefinitely. Thus, most of us were bred to believe that we must choose one over the other because they are incompatible. This dualism is draconian; it’s also draining. It kills greatness in the womb and denies destiny in the world. In doing so, we trade wow for why and a sense of wonder for a series of blunders that blight our lives and careers. The call to greatness reconciles the two, enabling us to reject the Manichean myth of their animosity. It changes our grade and puts us on a grid of self-discovery. Here we christen others because we have christened ourselves. We do so because we understand that leadership is a call to greatness!