Leadership is a Calling.

The topics of “leadership” and “how to be successful” are surely the subjects that are the best-selling topics on the market at the moment. I therefore thought that we could talk and meditate on these subjects so as to encourage one another.

We must remember that the difference between management and leadership is that management is a carrier and leadership is a calling. For managers, it is all about my job and how high I can get on the ladder of success. A leader, on the other hand, is driven because of a vision and the sense that there is a calling upon his/her life that he/she need to respond to.

President Nelson Mandela was, and still is, such a leader. In the years of liberation he was prepared to give his life for the cause. He could not ignore his calling because his calling took possession of him and he would have failed himself if the price to live out what he believed in became too big. Today, regardless of what the color of your skin is, you will agree that President Mandela was faithful to his calling. Managers put the success-ladder against the wall but leaders make sure that it is the right wall.

To be proactive in life is a leadership trait, if leaders don’t discover their own qualities and don’t have the courage to stand up to lead, we will be forced to be reactive one of these days. We cannot allow our own personal world to take us in captivity!

There is much more to all of us than our current reality.  It is true that we need to discover our hidden selves. It is also true that not all of us are leaders but that there are many undiscovered leaders amongst us. The majority of our true identity cannot be seen with human eyes. It is when we start to experience that irritation towards our environment, and we start to sense that we can make a difference, that self-belief and the discovering of hidden potential becomes important.  Our growth stalls when our invisible potential is not fed with positive attention and expectation.  There are some areas in our lives that, at times, get too much of our attention and, as a result, start to overshadow the leadership-potential in us.

One of the most important traits of leadership is relational capacity. Once again I want to use Mister Mandela as an example. It is known that, when he meets somebody, he will remember that person’s name even if it was only a once-off meeting. Relational capacity is an art that we need to develop however it is also important to know that it comes with the realisation that another person’s success becomes more important than your own. This is when we become fathers, when we are not afraid to give everything for the calling.

Leaders dream dreams. They refuse to let anyone or anything get in the way of achieving those dreams. They are realistic, but unrelenting. They are polite, but insistent. They constantly and consistently drive forward toward their goals.

You can be a leader. You will be – when it matters enough to you.