Let it not be the other way about. However high the post, the person should be higher. An extensive capacity expands and dilates more and more as his office becomes higher. On the other hand, the narrow-minded will easily lose heart and come to grief with diminished responsibilities and reputation...
Baltasar Gracián, 1647 (tr. Joseph Jacobs, 1892)
The person should always be larger than the position, not the position larger than the person. When someone of real capacity rises to a high office, they expand to fill it and then some, growing into the role and beyond it, so the office looks well occupied. When a narrow person is put in a large chair, the opposite happens: they are visibly diminished by it, overwhelmed rather than enlarged, and both their performance and their reputation shrink inside a role too big for them. The counsel is to build yourself so that your personal qualities exceed whatever post you hold, so you are always somewhat bigger than your title. The one who is greater than his office commands it; the one who is smaller than his office is exposed by it, and the higher the chair, the more the smallness shows.
Practice
- Build yourself bigger than your post; the person should always exceed the position, so you grow into a high office and beyond it (maxim 296's noble qualities feed it).
- Watch that you are never diminished by your chair; the narrow person overwhelmed by a large role has his smallness exposed by its very height.
- Grow your capacity ahead of your title; the one who is larger than his office commands it, the one who is smaller is exposed by it.
Use this when
- Use this when rising into a bigger role; make sure the person arriving is larger than the seat, not the reverse.
- Use it in judging who to elevate; the one whose qualities already exceed their current post will expand into a higher one.
Ignore this when
- Don't confuse this with arrogance about your title; being bigger than your office is about capacity, not self-importance (maxim 295 warns against claiming what you have not done).
- Don't refuse a stretch role for fear of it; the counsel is to grow to exceed the post, which often happens in the rising (maxim 265's stretch reveals capacity).
A picture of it
Promoted into a role far larger than any he had held, a manager makes it his business to be bigger than the chair rather than swallowed by it, growing his judgment, his composure, and his reach until the office looks comfortably occupied. A peer elevated at the same time does the opposite: overwhelmed by the scope, he shrinks inside the role, and his diminished bearing costs him both performance and reputation as the height of the post exposes the narrowness of the person. Same promotion, opposite results. One expanded to exceed his office; the other was exposed by it, because the chair was larger than the man who sat in it.
Be larger than your office, never smaller. The great mind fills a high chair and overflows it; the narrow one is exposed by its height.