How Is Lance Armstrong A Great Leader

Leadership Failure: Lance Armstrong
Leadership, what does that mean? Every individual that wants to achieve power and control over their future endeavors in creating success wants to be a great leader; however, not everyone has the same ideals of what being a great leader means and therefore they sometimes fail, which is the case with Lance Armstrong, the well-known cyclist winner, cancer advocate, and survivor. In general, according to Forbes, “leadership is a process of social influence, which maximizes the efforts of others, towards the achievement of a goal” (Kruse, "What Is Leadership?", 2013). Lance Armstrong has done exactly this. He has used his image to motivate and embolden not only individuals with cancer, but many with other health struggles. Unfortunately, he admittedly used performance enhancing drugs to achieve some of his goals.
History
At the age of just 10, he began to run, swim, and take on competitive cycling. By 13, the triathlons began. The Triathlons included combinations of a 1,000 meter swims, 15- mile bike rides and 3-mile runs ("Lance Armstrong Biography Cyclist"). Only 6 years after beginning this journey at the age of 16, he became a professional tri-athlete (“Lance Armstrong Biography Cyclist”). Lance Armstrong eventually shifted to strictly cycling as it was his best sport and, his favorite, in shifting he began to place and win multiple races, including placing 11th in the 1990 World Championship Road Race with the best time of any American since 1976, the U.S National Amateur Champion, First Union Grand Prix, and the Thrift Drug Classic (“Lance Armstrong Biography Cyclist”). From these early years, Lance Armstrong only strived to become better and to fight for a top spot in races to come in the years which followed, not knowing the struggles he would come to