On Leadership & Leading

Here Is What Leadership Actually Demands

In the office, the classroom, on the field, in our families, in our neighborhoods and on our block, we are all called at points to lead.

Leadership begins before anyone follows us.

It begins with how well we know ourselves and how deliberately we act.

Leadership and Self-Leadership require two things at the outset: Self-Awareness and Deliberate Action. We need to know what we value, what we stand for, what we do well, where we fall short, and how we behave when things become difficult. Then we need to act accordingly.

This sounds simple.

It isn't.

Self-Awareness Requires an Accurate Accounting

Self-Awareness is more than knowing what we like, what interests us, or what we're good at. True self-awareness requires an accurate accounting:

What do you love to talk about?

What do you do particularly well?

What subjects pull you toward them?

What are your favorite areas of the bookstore?

What work absorbs you?

These questions are manageable and are a good place to start, but self-awareness also requires real-deal accounting when it comes to the tougher stuff:

What do you avoid?

Where are you unreliable?

What happens to your judgment when you're tired, frustrated, or under pressure?

What promises do you reliably keep—and which ones do you make too easily?

Where do you make excuses?

How do others experience you?

We dig in to answer questions like these because Leadership demands that we become willing to see what is actually there. That includes strengths and weaknesses, values and contradictions, good habits and bad ones.

It includes examining how we spend our time, where we direct our attention, how we speak, what we repeatedly tolerate, and what we repeatedly do.

We cannot deliberately lead a person we refuse to accurately know.

And the first person we are responsible for knowing is ourselves.

Deliberate Action Makes Self-Awareness Useful

Self-Awareness alone doesn't make someone a leader.

What we know about ourselves must eventually change what we DO.

This is where habits and systems matter. Intention alone is insufficient. We need structures that make our intentions come to life and visible in our behavior.

A priority that never makes it onto the calendar is probably not much of a priority.

A value we repeatedly abandon under pressure isn't yet governing our behavior.

A decision we continually postpone has not really been made.

To lead our lives, we have to become more deliberate about what receives our time, attention, effort, and care.

Most of us know what it is to spend a day reacting—to email, requests, problems, other people's priorities, whatever happens to be loudest or most immediate. Fires spring up. We put them out. Low-value work expands. Important work waits.

Leading requires something different. It requires deliberate action and intention.

Living with intention is particular.

It asks us to decide what matters and what does not. Who we intend to be. How we will use our time. What we will tolerate. What we will decline. What deserves our attention. What we will repeatedly practice. What we will stop doing.

Deliberateness also requires decisions. 

And decisions require us, at some point, to choose and critically, to ACT.

Self-Leadership Is the Beginning, Not the Endpoint

There is, however, a danger in talking about Self-Leadership as though leadership were primarily an exercise in personal development.

It isn't.

Self-Leadership is the beginning of leadership, not its endpoint.

Leadership eventually turns outward.

It asks us to become aware not only of ourselves, but of the lives, experiences, abilities, and needs of other people. It asks us to consider what our decisions create—not merely for ourselves, but for those affected by them.

Leadership carries responsibility.

It requires us to care about something beyond our own advancement, comfort, recognition, or success. It asks us to take responsibility for people, work, ideas, institutions, communities, families, causes, and possibilities that matter.

That responsibility changes the question.

We move from What do I want? to What does this require of me?

Leadership, Responsibility, & Caring

Leadership is not simply authority. It isn't a title, a position, a large office, a following, or the ability to tell other people what to do.

Leadership is about seeing what is, imagining what could be, and accepting some responsibility for closing the distance between the two.

It requires judgment.

It requires courage.

It requires discipline.

It requires care.

Leaders create direction.

Leaders build trust.

Leaders create growth and opportunity.

They help people see possibilities that may not yet be obvious. They make decisions. They communicate expectations. They establish standards and live by them. They create conditions in which people can do good work, develop capability, assume responsibility, and grow.

And when things go badly, leadership demands something else: ownership.

It is easy to accept responsibility for what works. Leadership becomes more revealing when something doesn't.

What did I miss? What did I fail to communicate? What should I have seen sooner? What is mine to correct? What needs to happen now?

This is where Self-Awareness, Deliberate Action, responsibility, and care meet.

What Leadership Actually Demands

We all have the capacity to lead because leadership is not reserved for people occupying formal positions of authority.

We lead in businesses and classrooms. We lead teams and projects. We lead in families, friendships, neighborhoods, organizations, and communities. Sometimes we lead simply because something needs doing and we are willing to step forward and take responsibility for doing it.

Leadership asks something of us.

Know yourself.

Pay attention to your habits.

Examine your effect on other people.

Decide what matters.

Build your days around what you say matters.

Take responsibility for your words, your choices, your actions, and their consequences.

Care about the people affected by what you do.

Stand for something beyond yourself.

Then act.

Leadership begins with Self-Awareness. It becomes visible through Deliberate Action. And it becomes consequential when we accept responsibility for something larger than ourselves.