How to Know if You’re a Leader
Welcome again to 3-2-1 Take Action, where we share 3 thoughts on Leadership, 2 leadership tips, and 1 action point to help you take your leadership to the next level!
If you think you’re not a leader, this write-up is for you. If you think you’re a leader, then this write-up will help you to become even more certain.
The thoughts for today focus on debunking some illusions which prevent many people from seeing themselves as leaders or questioning if they’re really leaders. Here are the 3 illusions:
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- The Position Illusion – thinking that you need a position to be a leader
- The Knowledge Illusion – thinking you need to know everything to be a leader
- The First-Mover Illusion – thinking you need to be the first to do something to be a leader
In my time of working with leaders, I’ve seen many leaders struggle with these illusions, and this struggle prevents them from rising to their full potential.
The Position Illusion
Many people think that leadership is about the position or title that you have, and nothing could be farther from the truth. I’m sure if you reflect on your journey, you will know quite a few people who had the position but didn’t actually demonstrate the leadership you expected them to demonstrate. This shows that having the position doesn’t necessarily make you a leader. If you don’t have the position or title, you can still be a leader.
Leadership is influence nothing more, nothing less
The Knowledge Illusion
I’ve also seen many people who think that leadership is about knowing everything there is to know on a specific topic, but this is also not true. Leadership involves recognizing what you know and acknowledging what you don’t know. While it should be stated that there are things you need to learn to lead effectively, to expect to know everything, before you can be a leader, is an illusion. Good leaders know the things they don’t know and they know who to go to, to get the information they need.
The First-Mover Illusion
With this illusion, people think they can only be the leader when they are the first to do something. This is also not true. For example, if you look at today’s technology world, the leaders are not necessarily the first to get into that tech space. There is definitely a benefit for coming in first, but because you aren’t the first to do something doesn’t mean you can’t lead.
To summarize, although you don’t have the position (or title), or you don’t have the knowledge or you’re not the first to do something, you can still be a leader. Before you disagree with me, please read on to understand what leadership really is.
Leadership Tip 1
Leadership is influence.
John Maxwell is famously quoted as saying “Leadership is influence nothing more, nothing less”. To know if you’re a leader, I would like you to answer this question, “Over the last week, month or year, did you find yourself at a place or position where you could influence somebody?” I’m yet to find someone who would answer ‘no’ to that question because everyone would have had at least one opportunity to influence someone else during that time frame. Tim Elmore says, “Sociologists tell us the most introverted of people will influence 10,000 others in an average lifetime.” This is the first indicator to you that you’re a leader.
Leadership Tip 2
Leadership is Service
Service here refers to the ability to help somebody else move forward from wherever they are right now to where they need to be. If you’ve been able to open the door for someone to walk through, help a person lift a heavy load, support someone to complete a task at work. If you have been able to do that in whatever shape or form, then you’re a leader. This is the second indicator that you’re a leader.
As you reflect on these two descriptions of leadership, I am hoping you will begin to realize that you are more of a leader than you may have estimated yourself to be. This should also begin to shift your question from ‘Am I a leader’ to ‘How good a leader am I? This leads me to my one action point:
Action Step
I would like to find out how effective you are as a leader. Have you ever taken a leadership assessment before? When was the last time you did that? How have you acted on the recommendations from that assessment? Leadership is a skill that we keep on improving on throughout life, there will always be an opportunity for you to further develop – find out where and how!
Remember, it’s not the knowledge that you know that makes the difference; it’s the knowledge that you act on.
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