“The Task of Leadership is Not to Put Greatness Into Humanity, But to Elicit it, For The Greatness is Already There. “- John Buchan

This is one of my favourite leadership quotes, and I was reminded of it today when speaking with a close friend.

My friend was telling me about her children and how she encouraged them to pursue their dreams and ambitions by listening to their hopes and ambitions and pushing them to go after them.

I told her that this is the essence of leadership, helping people be all that they can be, and as parents, we are ideally placed to do just that with our own children.

Although quite often as parents, we try to force our dreams and ambitions onto our children and try to relive our lives through them, this is akin to trying to put greatness into them.

We try to get them to achieve things we wanted to achieve, rather than asking them what they want to achieve and supporting that, i.e. eliciting the greatness that’s within them.

As parents, we always want to do the best for our children and the best that we can do is to follow the words of John Buchan.

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