the potential of the people who work for him,” then it is your
task to do whatever you must to break out of such limits and
live up to your potential, to keep the covenant with your
youthful dreams.
Norman Lear would add to this that the goal isn’t worth
arriving at unless you enjoy the journey. “You have to look at
success incrementally,” he said. “It takes too long to get to
any major success.... If one can look at life as being success-
ful on a moment-by-moment basis, one might find that most
of it is successful. And take the bow inside for it. When we
wait for the big bow, it’s a lousy bargain. They don’t come but
once in too long a time.”
Applauding yourself for the small successes, and taking the
small bow, are good ways of learning to experience life each
moment that you live it. And that’s part of inventing yourself,
of creating your own destiny.
To become a leader, then, you must become yourself, be-
come the maker of your own life. While there are no rules for
doing this, there are some lessons I can offer from my decades
of observation and study. And we’ll turn to those lessons now.
On Becoming a Leader