CHAPTER 1
Igniting!
Absolute identity with one’s cause is the first
and great condition of successful leadership.
WOODROW WILSONLeadership is forged in the furnace.
The gracious, positive spirit of a Billy Graham—or the broad
smile of a Dwight Eisenhower or the exuberance of a Teddy Roo-
sevelt—does not reveal the complex, painful stories of how they
rose to great challenges or sustained their intensity. Far from being
a formula to learn, leadership is a set of life experiences melded
by intense heat.
The heat and struggle create often unexpected results. Jim
Collins, as he researched corporate leadership for his book Good to
Great, was caught off-guard by his team’s research findings. “The
good-to-great leaders seem to have come from Mars,” is how he
described his reaction to what they discovered about the very best
corporate leaders. “We were surprised, shocked really, to discover
the type of leadership required,” Collins wrote. What his team
found was a paradoxical blend of humility and “ferocious
resolve.”
Those two characteristics don’t easily meld. Only the furnace
can extrude such seemingly opposite characteristics. Billy Gra-
ham’s lifetime of leadership has, indeed, been paradoxical in
blending extraordinary humility with fierce intensity of purpose.
He fits Collins’s descriptions of highly effective leaders, for out of
that burning, paradoxical blend have come remarkable results.