This Leadership Myth Might Be Why You (Still) Don’t Feel Like a Leader
If you have to tell people you’re the leader, you’re not.
In my last article I mentioned that people are always surprised when I tell them I saw true leadership more often in the military than in the corporate world. But think about the last time your boss told you to do something. Why did you do it? Because you truly wanted to or just because your boss told you? The former is leadership. Honestly, the latter is simply management.
It was during my five years in the military when I learned this critical lesson about leadership: contrary to what many people believe, rank isn’t everything. Of course, there were times when we had to simply follow and obey our superiors, but when true leadership showed up it wasn’t because of a pin on their shirts. It was because both leaders and followers were aligned to a common goal. Instead of “bossing people around,” the great leaders worked with us to accomplish shared goals as a team.
Compare that with what I experienced in the corporate world. I’ve attended tons of “leadership” workshops and conferences where potential new leaders are either directly or indirectly taught that their title or position is the basis of their “leadership”. Managers are the bosses who are in charge, and they should be followed because they’re in “leadership positions.”
In reality, leadership happens the other way around — if you’re able to work with others and find ways to accomplish your goals together, you are rewarded by those people following you. Boom, you’re a leader! Unfortunately, hardly anyone is taught how to be successful with that path.
If you’re hearing alarm bells and starting to worry everything you’ve been taught about leadership is wrong, don’t panic. You have the ability to become a great leader, no matter how many management workshops you’ve attended! It’s not too late. Let’s get into how you can move past this myth and come into your own as a true leader.
What if they taught pilots the same way they teach leadership?
You’re boarding a plane, and you spot someone sitting in the cockpit. He’s got the jazzy outfit and the wings. Naturally, you assume he’s your pilot.
But then your pilot announces he’s never flown a plane before. He’s never landed one. He was given the title of pilot and expects his passengers and the plane to cooperate with him just because he’s sitting in the cockpit.
If I were on that plane I’d be looking for a parachute! And nobody would blame me. But for some reason, that’s exactly the myth that potential leaders are taught every day: you have to impress your boss to get a promotion and get a team to lead. You’re taught that simply because you’re the manager, you should expect your team to work with you and obey your orders. Volia! You’re a leader! No wonder so many people with the potential to be truly incredible leaders get stuck at this hurdle.
You’re not going to crash a plane, thankfully; but that misconception is stopping you from realizing your true potential as a leader, and it’s holding your team back from doing truly epic sh*t. The dangers of this myth are still very real.
Most corporate “leadership” teaching is actually thinly veiled management training sprinkled with “soft skills” on top. Don’t get me wrong, management is a critical part of any organization. But it’s not leadership. This means that incredible amounts of actual leadership potential is squandered because people are taught that their position means that their team should just get on board with their brilliant ideas.
If you’ve been having trouble leading a team, that misconception might just be why.
True leadership is mutual agreement… without coercion
It’s easy to point out why our fraudulent pilot wasn’t really a pilot. To be a real pilot, you have to safely take off, fly the plane, land, and deal with any issues that may come up during the flight, like turbulence. It’s clear that simply sitting in the cockpit and wearing a pilot hat is not enough.
It’s trickier to identify a list of things a leader should be able to do in order to proudly (and safely) call themselves a leader. If you think about what makes a leader, what does that person have to do? You might think of leaders as people in suits sitting in the biggest office, but those are just the trappings of leadership, not the skill itself.
For so long so many of us have been taught the wrong model of leadership. But now that you’ve identified this myth, you should be able to find examples of what real leadership looks like and how you can move past this myth yourself.
How to identify real leadership
I’ve spent a long time figuring out why so much corporate teaching falls short and what really makes a person a successful leader. When I take the lessons from the pilot metaphor and apply them to leadership, here’s what I come up with:
- Leadership isn’t a role or title, but a framework with specific steps to actually accomplish a clearly defined goal.
- Because it isn’t about a role or title anyone (who is willing to take the responsibility and put in the work) can be a leader.
- Leaders and followers respect each other mutually. Leaders don’t expect followers to obey simply because of their positional power.
Build your own checklist, or model yours off mine, to identify if your approach to leadership leans too close to that myth. If you can’t explain the skills that make you a leader, or if you struggle to motivate your team without relying on your position, or if you find yourself leaning on your title to get stuff done, you might have fallen into the myth that position equals leadership.
The good news is that leadership is not something you’re born with. It’s something you learn. You can read this article and move on with your life, or you can take this opportunity to reflect on your approach to leadership and how you can improve. Nobody is a perfect leader, but everyone can do better.
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