Journey to greater leadership

May 21, 2025

When you are in school or college, you may feel you are insignificant. You have yet to prove yourself. When you start a job, you feel you are something, but yet small. You feel the need to grow and develop yourself so that you can become someone big. Then you struggle and get a higher position in job and in society and you feel you are successful.

The journey does not end there. It may take two routes. One goes straight — getting bigger and bigger, becoming more and more successful. That is a linear progress. The other takes a shift from ‘big’ to ‘great’. So, there are two destinations of success and leadership. As David Hawkins says in his book Power Vs Force, “There is success, and then there is success. The former frequently jeopardises life, while the latter enhances it.” In the same way, let us say there is leadership, and then there is leadership.

The turn from ‘big’ to ‘great’ is in fact a ‘U’ turn. So, it does not travel straight from ‘great’ to ‘greater’, rather it goes back to your original nature. But when you go back, you will not be the same ‘small’ you in the beginning, you rather become subtle. As your journey progresses, you do not grow greater and greater, but turn to be subtler and subtler. Real greatness lies in subtleness. In fact, subtleties matter the most, whether in relationship or communication, motivation or facilitation. Even in physics, as science progresses, the search has turned towards subtle to subtler. Science has realised that when there is a shift in a subtle domain, the effect is immense.

So how to know which route you are taking? As Hawkins writes, “We all know people for whom just a bit of success is corrupting — who become arrogant, officious, and controlling when given even a small taste of authority.” If this is happening, know that you are not in the track of greater leadership. You use your leadership to show you are more knowledgeable, important and powerful than others. But inwardly, you become vain. It is a superficial journey. You are not developing, but the same you is just getting bigger. And the final fate is of an over-inflated balloon — only to be blasted at some point.

Hawkins continues, “By the same token, we also know people of much greater authority who are cordial, sensitive, and caring.” This is the indicator of progressing in greater path. This path is non-linear. It is full of shifts. As liquid is measured in litres and area in inches, leadership progress is measured in shifts. Every shift transforms you to new level of understanding and truth. Following this route, you may get wealth, position and fame, but the more you get them, the more humble you become. As you become subtler, your qualities become finer. You start recognising subtlest changes make greatest differences. There is great difference between being simple and being simplistic. The craving to get  bigger is simplistic. Becoming subtle is being simple without being simplistic.