Interviews
Challenge Is the Opportunity for Greatness
Take out a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. Think of a few well-known historical figures you consider exemplary leaders. Think about the men and women who you believe have led organizations, communities, states, nations, or the world to greatness. Write their names in the left-hand column. In the right-hand column opposite each name, record the events, circumstances, or historical contexts with which you identify each of these individuals.
Now review the list. Cover the names, and look only at the right-hand column listing the events, circumstances, or contexts. Is there any pattern in these leadership situations? What do they have in common?
We predict that your list will consist of leaders you identify with the creation of new institutions, the resolution of serious crises, the winning of wars, the organization of revolutionary movements, protests for improving social conditions, political change, innovation, or some other social transformation.
The following are a few examples of the historical leaders people have mentioned when we've asked this question. See if you don't agree with the observation.
Historical Leaders: Situation or Context
- Susan B. Anthony -- Women's rights
- Mahatma Gandhi -- National independence
- Abraham Lincoln -- Civil War
- Florence Kelly -- Fought for child labor laws
- Martin Luther King Jr. -- Civil rights
- Nelson Mandela -- National liberation movement
- Rosa Parks -- Civil rights
- Mother Teresa -- Served the poorest of the poor
Consistently over time, we've found that when we ask people to think of exemplary leaders, they recall individuals who served during times of turbulence, conflict, innovation, and change. They think of people who triumphed against overwhelming odds, who took the initiative when there was inertia, who confronted the established order, who rose to the challenge of adversity, who mobilized people and institutions in the face of strong resistance. They think of people who generated momentum in society and then guided that energy toward a more fulfilling future.
When times are stable and secure, we’re not severely tested. We may perform well, we may get promoted, we may even achieve fame and fortune. But certainty and routine breed complacency. In times of calm, we don’t take the opportunity to burrow inside and discover the true gifts buried down deep. In contrast, personal, business, and social hardships have a way of making us come face-to-face with who we really are and what we’re capable of becoming. Only challenge produces the opportunity for greatness. And given the daunting challenges we face today, the potential for greatness is monumental.
You may also notice something else about this list. The leaders we admire are also the ones who have the courage of their convictions. Not only do they have a clear set of principles and a vision which guides them, they also stand up for those beliefs during times of intense challenge and radical change. Of course, that's one of the reasons we admire them, but it's also a highly significant leadership lesson. It's only when are beliefs are tested in the trials of adversity that we know whether a leader has the "right stuff."
Skeptics might say that this is true only for those few great leaders who've made their mark on history, and it can't be true for those less famous. Absolutely not so. When my coauthor, Barry Posner, and I analyzed the initial set of personal-best cases in our leadership research, we discovered exactly the same thing. The challenges faced by the leaders we studied may have been less grand, but even so the situations they chose to discuss were about major change that had a significant impact on their organizations. This remains true today: regardless of function, field, economic sector, organizational level, or national boundary, the leaders in our study talk about times when they lead adventures into new territory. They tell us how they turned around losing operations, started up new plants, installed untested procedures, or greatly improved the results of poorly performing units. And these weren’t 10, 25, or even 50 percent improvements in products and processes; in many cases, the magnitude of changes was in the hundreds of percent. The personal-best leadership cases were about firsts, about radical departures from the past, about doing things that had never been done before, about going to places not yet discovered.
What’s significant about the emphasis on innovation in our leadership cases is that we don’t ask people to tell us about change; we ask them to tell us about personal-best leadership experiences. They can discuss any leadership experience they choose: past or present, unofficial or official; in any functional area; in any community, voluntary, religious, health care, educational, public-sector, or private-sector organization. Our respondents elected to talk about times of change, not time of stability and the status quo. Their stories underscore the fact that leadership demands changing the business-as-usual environment.
Whether we're reflecting on historical leaders or reviewing personal best leadership experiences, the study of leadership is the study of how men and women guide us through adversity, uncertainty, hardship, disruption, transformation, transition, recovery, new beginnings, and other significant challenges. It's also the study of how men and women, in times of constancy and complacency, actively seek to disturb the status quo and awaken to new possibilities.
In recent years the phrase "change leadership" has been popping up more and more frequently, perhaps in recognition of the role leaders play in turbulent times. While we understand the currency of the phrase, we think "change leadership" is redundant. Based on our evidence, change is what leadership is all about. What else would you call it -- "keep-things-the-same leadership"? There's just leadership, and then there's something else.
You need only look in the dictionary to understand the meaning. The word lead, at its root, means “go, travel, guide.” Leadership has about it a kinesthetic feel, a real sense of movement. Leadership is about going places, about travel and adventure, about stepping out into unknown territory. Leaders are pioneers. They begin the quest for a new order. They venture into unexplored territory and guide us to new and unfamiliar destinations. Leaders “go first.” They actively search for opportunities to change, grow, innovate, and improve.
Stuff happens in organizations and in our lives. Sometimes we choose it; sometimes it chooses us. It's unavoidable. People who become leaders don’t always seek the challenges they face. Challenges also seek leaders. Opportunities to challenge the process and introduce change open the door to doing one’s best. Challenge is the motivating environment for excellence. Challenging opportunities often bring forth skills and abilities that people don’t know they have. Given opportunity and support, ordinary men and women can get extraordinary things done in organizations. It's not so important whether you find the challenges or they find you. What is important are the choices you make when stuff happens. The question is, When opportunity knocks are you prepared to answer the door? James M. Kouzes
