Think for a moment about all of the situations in which you are a leader formally or informally. With your friends? clubs? organizations? children? business? You’ll probably be amazed at how many people look to you for leadership. Often we don’t realize the importance of the leadership role we play because we confuse it with formal leadership roles (for example: the president of a company or a club president, etc). However, anywhere we have more than one person together, one will emerge the “leader” in that given situation. Depending upon the situation, the roles may switch even between the same two people. For example, let’s look at the family unit. In some situations, the woman is the leader. In other situations, the man is the leader. For years there were traditional “roles” that were considered male or female leadership roles. One of the greatest most broadening results of the seventies is that no longer is it a “typical situation.” More and more households are sharing decisions, switching roles, and being the leaders based on their personal needs and desires rather than society’s mandates.
In organizational settings, the leadership roles also switch. Depending on the issue, problem, or goal, leadership will vary based on the knowledge, interests, and needs of the individuals within the organizational structure. While it is true that everyone, many more times than we realize, practices personal leadership, it is also true that most of us have never developed our leadership abilities to their fullest. In many cases we’ve learned more of what not to do than what to do. Because of this, many times the “quality” of our leadership varies tremendously.
The degree to which you will develop your own personal leadership skills will most directly be affected by your realization of the responsibility of leadership. When we examine the responsibility of leadership, we begin to realize that we, not others, are really responsible for our lives, actions, and rewards. We also begin to realize that in many ways and many times, we have the opportunity to directly influence (good or bad) the lives of others.
Never before in our history has there been more opportunity - or more need for leadership. Every day in countless unseen cases, people are looking to you for leadership. Children, friends, peers, co-workers, customers, and many times organizations look to you for leadership. Not formal leadership necessarily. Personal leadership is leadership by example. Formal leadership is merely an outgrowth of the confident, determined, “solution-oriented” tendencies of internal personal leadership. While personal leadership requires no formal setting, formal leadership is possible only by a person who has developed personal leadership. All of these reasons, and more, convince us that each of us should work to develop our own personal leadership skills.
Right now you have already begun that process. Today you possess all the tools you will need. Goal setting can help you to sharpen your skills on how and when to use those tools, and perhaps even determine a few new ones. Leadership development is in some ways like intellectual development. The more we improve, the greater the potential for improvement. It will be governed only by the amount of action and desire we put into it.
This is #3 of a five part series. Part Four: Are You a Natural Born Leader?
For more information visit www.HollandResource.com
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