Leadership: The Great Calling of Life–The Grand Challenge for Us All

What does it mean to be a leader?

Leaders are those who can turn a struggling, ragtag army freezing at Valley Forge into a force that topples an empire. Leaders are people who reach out to friends in pain to help them topple their fears and recapture their confi dence. A leader can take a nation engaged in civil war and help unite the factions. A leader can also help save a struggling marriage or warring family.

A leader can cast a vision and challenge a nation to achieve something seemingly impossible—even as audacious as putting a man on the moon. A leader can also cast a vision for a startup company that inspires a small group of people working in a garage to ultimately revolutionize an industry and forever change how we live.

Whether leading a nation, a multibillion-dollar corporation, a small sales team or a family, the qualities of a leader are the same. A leader instills confidence and helps people become more than they are. Leaders illuminate the path for others to journey forward, farther than they thought possible by themselves.

“Leaders illuminate the path for others to journey forward, farther than they thought possible by themselves.”

Whether we know it or not, we are all leaders. At every moment, everyone around us is watching our example. That is why it is important to make sure your example is one to reach for rather than one to be warned by. I think leadership is the great calling of life, the grand challenge for us all.

Leadership is not to hold power over others or to illuminate our own greatness; quite the opposite, in fact. I believe the most important responsibility of leadership is to cultivate and inspire leadership in everyone around us.

The man who led us to topple an empire was the same man who refused to be king. Instead, George Washington demonstrated the best of leadership by stepping away from the throne and empowering those around him to be leaders.

This month’s issue of SUCCESS is focused on leadership. Now we need leadership like never before. Your community, your team, your family needs YOUR leadership - especially now.

For our leadership issue, we went out and got the man deemed America’s foremost authority on the topic, John C. Maxwell, shown above. Be sure to read his feature and if you are a subscriber, listen to the first of what will become a series on leadership on the audio side of our DualDisc™ (can get on newsstands too).

I would additionally like to point out the feature on mentors in this issue. Mentors have played an especially important part of my success journey, and we have included a clip from my most influential mentor, Jim Rohn, on the video side of the DualDisc™. Just as my journey began with Mr. Rohn, you also can find mentors in books, audios, videos—and right here in the pages of SUCCESS magazine.

Lead on!

-Darren Hardy, publisher of SUCCESS

P.S. - Seize your chance to see John Maxwell live at SUCCESS Symposium March 28th in Dallas, Texas. 2,000 other ambitious minded entrepreneurs will be there - will you?

Additional great articles in this months issue of SUCCESS:

• Mining the New Ecomonmy for Opportunities
• 1on1 with Jim Rohn, Denis Waitely and Chris Widener
• Feature on Cal Ripkin
• From the Archives with Muhammad Ali
• Your Real Age with Drs. Oz and Roizen

Follow Darren behind the scenes of SUCCESS: www.twitter.com/DarrenHardy

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