Leadership: Fate, Destiny, And Seizing Opportunity

By Lintao "LT" Lu

I am not a religious person, but I do believe in destiny. In the same breath, I will also share that I believe nothing is accomplished without goal setting and hard work. Are those two statements contradictory? One does not preclude the other. Are leaders chosen by fate, destined to reach their eventual positions?

Two famous examples of CEOs who rose up from the humblest entries in their companies to one day lead them—Mary Barra, who started at eighteen on the General Motors assembly line, and Doug McMillon, who loaded trucks at a Wal-Mart distribution center as a high schooler—would probably suggest that their success took a lot of hard work, diligence, and learning at every stage. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they also said they benefited from being in the right place at the right time. Their placement at the helm of their companies is a mixture of fate, relentless commitment, and intelligence informed by commonsense, close observation, and curiosity. I wonder…at eighteen, could they imagine their eventual success?

Fate. Destiny. There’s a lot in our lives that we can’t control. Does the most capable person or the hardest worker always get the promotion? Not in every business culture. Does every CEO possess talents that helped them reach their position? Unless they are the child of the company’s owner, yes, they have abilities that aided their success, even if those abilities were not visible to some of the people they passed on their way up. But they also undoubtedly had help along the way. Mentors. People who gave them a chance. People who provided them room to learn from their stumbles. And, yes, they probably got lucky more than once.

Random Chance Meets Opportunity

I have worked tirelessly to reach the point where I run my own company, including years spent climbing the corporate ladder until I reached the C-suite of a Fortune 500 company. But some of the circumstances of my life might make you believe in fate. Was it fate that controlled my birth in a tiny Chinese village in the middle of the Cultural Revolution? Fate that the year I graduated high school marked the end of the Revolution and the first time in a decade that the government held college placement exams? Was it destiny that this child of rural, illiterate parents would earn a doctorate and live in several of the world’s most modern, affluent cities?

The pendulum swing between happenstance and purposeful action never stops. I possessed a native intelligence for learning, something biology tells us was genetically passed down from my parents. Do you doubt a machinist and a farmer could be smart? The difference: They lived in a time and place that never provided them with the opportunity to be formally educated. Meanwhile, I worked hard and paid attention in school, listened to and wished to please the teachers who wanted the best for me, yet if my fate had been my older brother’s (who is just a few years my senior), I never would have had the chance to take the national exam and go to college.

Once these circumstances aligned, it was up to me to make the most of this intervention of fate. Through lived experience across cultures and adversity, I see how resilience, integrity, and long-term perspective quietly determine what becomes possible. I believe destiny is shaped by character, not circumstance. It is inner strength, not origin, that sustains a meaningful life. Character creates destiny.

Your childhood likely looked nothing like mine. We are each on individual journeys. There may be fates that determine aspects of our lives that we cannot foresee or control. But we all face daily decisions, and those decisions place us on new journeys. Once we know where we want to go, every step becomes purposeful, even the missteps.

So What Can We Control?

First, we dare to dream; we believe that anything is possible. Second, we aim high, push ourselves, and never settle. Third, we allow every experience to teach us; good or bad, comfortable or uncomfortable, we ask. Fourth, we accept opportunities whenever they arise; when presented with the chance to learn or experience something new, when asked to take on additional responsibility, when given the chance to advance, we cast doubt and uncertainty aside and leap. And lastly, most important of all, we don’t hoard the success we achieve for ourselves; instead, we remove obstacles from the paths of those who come after us and provide them with opportunities to reach their own destinations. Who knows, perhaps by doing so, we are merely playing our role in their destiny (or they in ours).