Are you completely comfortable with calling yourself a leader?
I’ve asked that question many times before and most of the time the majority of people say that they aren’t. I believe we have made leadership into something bigger than us, we have made it into something beyond us, we have made it about changing the world.
We’ve taken this title of leader and we treat it as something that one day we are going to deserve, but to give it to ourselves now would require a level of cockiness or arrogance that we’re not comfortable with.
We spend so much time celebrating extraordinary things that hardly anybody can do, we are convinced that those are the only things worth celebrating. So, we start to devalue the things we do everyday. There are moments where we truly are a leader but we don’t let ourselves take credit for it or take the time to feel good about it.
Even when we are comfortable with calling ourselves a leader, we have it wrong; leadership is not a title. It is a mindset. And the mindset of many ‘leaders’ today is too often one of management.
There is nothing wrong with management, good management is essential to the well-being of any organisation. It is what ensures that staff are paid, that deadlines are met and that the wheels keep turning. But it will not tell the wheels where they are going, or why.
So what should being a leader look like in the workplace, well leadership should be about recognising everyday moments of excellence, it should be recognising the everyday impact we can have on our colleagues lives. When we recognise that, when we realise how powerful agents for change we can be, then I believe the workplace culture will shift towards being more positive, collaborative and engaging!
