Leadership is not a title, it’s what you do
One of our favorite questions to ask clients is a simple one:
“When did you first realize you were a leader?”.
The question elicits wonderfully personal stories, filled with funny moments and bright details. We’ve heard hundreds of these stories now, and there’s an interesting pattern that keeps coming up.
It’s a pattern of taking on responsibility for others early in life without much (or any) formal authority, and realizing that success is no longer about you as an individual.
For example, Jun was thrust into the role of captain of his Ivy League golf team just as his own game was suffering. He ended up having his worst year as an individual contributor but the college team had its best year, not least because he took the time to coach people individually and rally them.
Tara had to rally a reluctant cast of characters to produce a college yearbook with nothing more than her own powers of persuasion.
Whitney organized a boycott of a local Fast Food outlet when she found out about employees being paid below market wages — and vividly recalled the fear that no one would listen to her or sign her petition.
The reason we ask this question of executives is not just to indulge in a little nostalgia. It’s to return them to the essence of leadership and remind them what it feels like to actually lead. That sense of setting self-interest aside to take responsibility for others. The scary feeling of not knowing the answers, but caring enough about the destination to take a risk. The struggle to bring people along on a journey when you are still figuring things out yourself.
The reminder is important for senior leaders because the more you go up in rank in an organization, the more fear, complacency and hesitation seem to creep in — there’s more status to lose. At some point, leaders focus more on getting and holding onto authority than the more edifying work of mastering leadership skills.
I’m reminded of a poem I love — and read many times on the London Underground on my long commutes to school as a teenager:
I wanna be the leader
I wanna be the leader
Can I be the leader?
Can I? I can?
Promise? Promise?
Yippee I’m the leader
I’m the leader
Okay, now what shall we do?
— Roger McGough.
Leadership doesn’t belong to those who occupy any particular role! It belongs to anyone who — from our TJAL definition — “influences and motivates people to achieve a shared vision and improve an organization”.
When you see leadership as a process and not a position, you can appreciate it as an active skill to work on and master, with all the frustrations and challenges of learning that come with any skill that you must master.
We would all be better off if people focused on leadership as a skill and a virtue to master, rather than a position.
Executives and politicians would be braver and more likely to make better decisions for the good of society. People from all walks of society without formal authority would authorize themselves to step up more — as the kids from Marjory Stoneman Douglas did — to lead us where we have dared not go before.
On a more immediate level, reconnecting to what it feels like to actually lead is liberating for our clients. They can step out of the trap of thinking “I’m the one in charge so I must have all the answers” — and into a more vulnerable, open and fulfilling space of learning and leading through change.