Leading From The Middle: A New Series On Leadership For Everyone Else

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” — John Quincy Adams

There are a lot of self-help and motivational works out there. You can save yourself a ton of money by going to used book sales and acquire last year’s or even last decade’s hottest, trendiest book. You can find out who moved your cheese, pick up seven highly effective habits, awaken your inner giant, use your positive thoughts to get rich — there’s any number books available at a garage sale near you. But here’s the thing…

They’re all going to tell you a variation of the same themes:

• Visualize the person you want to be, not the person you are.
• Defeat negative self-talk by reaffirming your positive attributes (in other words, say nice things about yourself, not mean things)
• Change is going to happen. Embrace it.
• Winners never quit and quitters never win. Persistence is one of the critical keys to success for those who weren’t born into money or power. Which means most of us to one degree or another.
• Look at what successful people do, how they think, and act. Emulate that.
• Find someone who is where you want to be. Get them to mentor you.
• Don’t be a jerk.

There may be other details, but I’ve given you a synopsis of most of the business self-help books out there. Many think that these principles are only for CEOs , or for people who aspire to senior leadership — but not you. Nothing could be further from the truth. By John Q’s definition, anyone can be a leader, even you.

In this series, I’m going to touch on these principles, and add some others, and through it I will share my story with you — how I applied these principles to my own life — and continue to do so. This is a story for everyone. Everyone has dreams, everyone has goals, and just about everyone wants a better life. I’m not rich — I’m not the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, or a .com billionaire. But I am a guy who has come from almost nothing to carve out a life worth living, at least to me. And I’ve done it more than once.

Anyone can be a leader, even if all you want out of life is to be individual contributor. In playing your part, you can inspire others to be better — to dream bigger, to continuously learn, to accomplish and become more. There are plenty of managers out there. The world doesn’t need more managers, it needs better leaders. Time to step up!

Articles in this series:
Leading From The Middle: Fearless Humility
Leading From The Middle: See The ‘Who’ You Want To Be

Chris Huennekens is a Program Lead at Microsoft, deploying SharePoint. You can view his LinkedIn profile at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrishuennekens/