True Greatness

One of the t.v shows my wife and I like to watch is called The Apprentice: where candidates prove to Sir Allen Sugar that they have what it takes to be his next business partner. Self-exaltation is the name of the game, often at the expense of genuine competence and proficiency all the while belittling the achievements of other candidates. It doesn't matter how worthy of being Sir Allen's business partner you are, it's a dog-eat-dog environment. Go in with humility and you won’t last long.
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Some groups provide assertiveness training to help people climb the career ladder faster and get a better-paid position or promotion in their chosen careers. Never mind acquiring the necessary skills, experience, and competence to do a job well for your boss, as long as you can play the role, appear assertive, appear confident, be authoritarian, and take command over others, you can climb the ladder, that is how the world seems to work.

The request of James and John
35 Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. “Teacher,” they said, “we want you to do for us whatever we ask.”
36 “What do you want me to do for you?” he asked.
37 They replied, “Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.”

James and John want to be great, they want to be exalted, and they want status but are they able to do the necessary things that would lead to such a status in God’s Kingdom to sit at the left and right hand of the King of Kings in his Glory?
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Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?”
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The question is of course rhetorical as it points to Jesus' atoning sacrifice that he will make on behalf of the nation, but they miss the point because their vision of "greatness" is skewed. They want the Glory of militaristic martyrdom, but Jesus’s Glory would be supremely displayed through his suffering on the cross.
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So what is it that makes a person great in the Kingdom of God? What does Jesus teach about greatness?

Matthew 18:3–4 NIV
And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.