At every opportunity, I share a message with the leaders I work with: “Enough of playing around – the world needs you.” This call is not about pushing harder for performance; it’s about stepping into leadership that transforms – both self and system. The pace of change around us demands a response beyond routine or compliance. It demands boldness.

And yet, too often, leaders choose mediocrity. Why?

Because mediocrity feels safer. It avoids discomfort. It doesn’t require the internal shift that true change demands. But that safety is an illusion. The cost of staying in the comfort zone is the loss of agency, impact, and meaning — both for the leader and those they serve.

Stepping out of the comfort zone means feeling the pull toward something more. Whether you lead a team, an organisation, a community, or simply yourself, this step speaks to your rejection of mediocrity, stepping out of the familiar, and leading on the edge — where growth, boldness, and real change live.

Too many leaders operate in maintenance mode. They keep systems running, make safe decisions, and preserve the status quo — not because they lack ambition, but because boldness asks them to take real risks. And that’s uncomfortable. Leadership on the edge requires us to confront this question honestly: What are we willing to risk — and for the sake of what? Answer this, and you’ll define the threshold between comfort and transformation.

Many leaders I’ve worked with experience this tension in their leadership landscape — their immediate day-to-day reality. It's not that they don’t want change; they often avoid the risk required to make it real. But without risk, there is no extraordinary leadership — only ordinary administration.

When leaders accept mediocrity, it becomes a collective crisis. It’s not just their potential that goes unrealised, but the potential of entire organisations and communities. Their leadership story ends with the quiet regret of untapped possibility: “We could have done so much, but we did nothing.”

Why does this happen? Because bold leadership requires more than strategy. It requires agency — the felt sense that I can make a difference here, and I must. Mediocre leadership abandons agency in favour of control, routine, or fear of judgment or failure. And when agency disappears, so does possibility.

But leadership is not about preserving who we’ve been — it’s about becoming who we’re capable of being next. It’s about outpacing our current selves and evolving into more daring versions. That journey always takes us to the edge — the place where what’s known ends and what’s possible begins.

The leaders I admire are not superhuman. They are ordinary people who made extraordinary choices. They stepped toward discomfort instead of away from it. They accepted the deal of walking on the edge: the deal that says meaningful change is possible only when you're willing to risk the comfort of mediocrity.

If you’re reading this, you might feel that same tension — between staying where you are and stepping into something greater. You might feel the pressure to play it safe. But safe leadership doesn’t change systems. It doesn’t inspire others. And it doesn’t leave behind a legacy worth remembering.

Bold leadership embraces a different path — one of conviction and risk. Mediocrity may feel like the easier path. But the truth is: the world doesn’t need more leaders playing it safe. The world needs you — bold, present, and willing to walk on the edge.

So, here’s your task: make your leadership story the one that moves others — the story that inspires people to challenge the norm, rise beyond mediocrity, and believe in bold, meaningful change. To lead on the edge is to stop playing small. It’s about turning daring ideas into real, disruptive impact.

Bold leaders become truly bold the moment they risk something real — when they take action that pushes past comfort, past convention, and right to the edge of transformation. That’s where leadership stops preserving the present and starts reshaping the future.

Because that is the task of leadership: to turn the present into a better future. And that future can’t be built without questioning — and disrupting — the status quo.

In my book Leading on the Edge, I speak to those who dare to risk enough of themselves to lead the real change, without hesitation.

The cost of your hesitant leadership is simply too high — for you, and for all of us.

In the 2018 documentary Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind, there’s a moment when he says, “It’s too late to be sane. You’re only given a little spark of madness, and if you lose that, you’re nothing.” It’s too late not to lead boldly. Too late not to walk on the edge. And when you do, you are far from being nothing.

In fact, on that very edge — to yourself, to others, and to the world — you might just be everything.

Zana Goic Petricevic is a leadership transformation expert.