Gandhi once said “All leadership begins with self-mastery. You can’t lead others until you can first lead yourself.” That statement alone, till this day, still changes many social and academic perspectives on what real leadership should consist of by definition. Yet, the real question still lies, what does it mean to be a leader? Does leadership come from the role you play within one’s organization or does it have more to do with their social abilities such as displaying or communication ideas to fellow staff members? To me, it’s more than that. Titles are important, yet not all titles can fully illustrate what a committed, hardworking, employee actually does for their company. I am a firm believer that true leadership cannot be awarded, appointed or assigned. There have been great leaders who did not hold high positions such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr who never officially held a position during the civil rights movement and yet still found ways to convince the masses to protest with using violence.

In this novel, Author Mark Sanborn simply defines leadership as “an invitation to greatness that we extend to others”. The problem is that a person can’t extend this invitation without accepting it themselves first; you can’t expect a commitment from others when you aren’t willing to make the commitment yourself. The great Inventors, Scholars, and Business Innovators throughout history all had two things in common; one is that they truly believed in changing mankind for the better and the other, was showing how a process could be improved through their own actions first. For instance, the story of Miss Karen wood, Aide to West Point’s Adjutant General, brought great life to her stories as she believed in leading with a passionate purpose rather than a simple sense of entitled. When Donald Stewart, a World War II Veteran, who worked on the front-lines as a