Who is a leader?

Who Is A Leader?

When a question such as “Who is a leader?” arises, answers are varied because they are based on who answers it. For example, if leadership professors ask his/ her students, it can be expected that answers are definitions taken from textbooks, which many scholars described how effective leaders are like through the lens of various theories. Common concepts of those theories can be summed up as follows: 

1. Being initiative to direct a group by taking actions and motivating his/ her group to achieve goals; 
2. Being a good role model and creating a good work environment within the group; 
3. Being a coach to the group, training the group members, reducing tension and conflicts, converting them into positive impacts to team interaction (Denhardt, Denhardt & Aristigueta, 2016; Shirin, 2008).

However, if someone asks his/ her subordinates or military personals who their leaders are, they may name people from the higher rank and the chain of command, such as a chief, a captain, a manager or a chief executive officer (CEO). Clearly, the definitions through scholars’ and common people’s views are quite different. Hence, in the real life, people easily misunderstand that the leaders are people who possess and utilize legitimate power, and the power that is authorized through professional positions makes people become the leaders. Moreover, those people always see themselves as followers who are ineligible to make any changes or to lead. They believe that what they should do is to simply shadow the authorized people. Fortunately, this thought was challenged by Robin Sharma, an author of a book entitled The Leader Who Had No Title. Sharma wrote, “Each one of us has this internal reservoir of leadership potential. We just need to become aware of it and then really own it” (2010, p.18). To answer the question of who the leaders are, it turns out that everyone is a leader. 

Four reasons that make people think that they cannot become leaders 

• People think that the leaders must have titles. 

The good example given by Sharma is Tommy Finn, a senior person who volunteers to be transferred to improve one of the Bright Mind Bookstores. In order to do so, he refused to take a position as a vice president in his company, but he still keeps putting his effort toward the company as a leader. 

• People think they do not have potentials to lead. 

Many people such as Blake Davis, Tommy’s apprentice, feels lost and lacks of motivation in his/ her life. They usually live paycheck to paycheck. They feel that they barely have any abilities to do anything. Hence, they simply do what they are told, and leading people becomes impossible for them because they cannot even lead themselves to achieve their personal goals. 

• People think they are pleasers, and it is not their nature to be in charge. 

Since people see the leaders as born-to-be leaders who can influence the group by his or her traits. Therefore, they think that to please people is a trait that distracts them from a leading position. This is not always true because pleasers are full of likeability and referent power which is an ability to influence the followers to achieve the goals through respects (Northouse, 2016). These people who fit in this type can be seen as servant leaders, the leadership style that one wants to serve others (Northouse, 2016) 

• Many people are afraid to fail when they move out of their comfort zone. 

There are times that people let an opportunity slips away by staying in their comfort zone. A similar situation happens when people get an offer to take a lead. One of my shipmate colleagues was offered to be a night shift supervisor. She refused that opportunity. Later, she revealed that her decision was caused by the fact that she did not want to take a responsibility when things go wrong. 

How to start being a leader? 

In order to become leaders, people need to start leading themselves on an individual level. Admiral William H. McRaven, the ninth commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, gave a speech at Texas at Austin 2014 Commencement. He said, “If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed”. This statement is very insightful. It suggests people that they leave their comfort zone by making small steps to bigger ones. His speech benefits everyone in the aspect of how to become the leaders. The leaders have more responsibilities in terms of workload. Still, they need to have good people skills to influence the followers to achieve their personal and organizational goals. Although it is not easy to become the leaders, starting off with doing the best on our role is a good and stable step, as Tommy told Blake, “No role is a small role” (Sharma, 2010). Moreover, he compared the leadership as playing symphony music that everyone plays his/ her part to make a beautiful song. For each individual to exhibit leadership, “we need to start by being truly excellent in our current role” (Sharma, 2010, p.15). In this regard, while each individual is responsible for his/ her role, at the same time, it is recommended that s/he supports the others in an organization level regardless of what position s/he is assigned.

References:

Denhardt, R. B., Denhardt, J. V., & Aristigueta, M. P. (2016). Managing Human Behavior in Public and Nonprofit Organization (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE

Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and Practice (7th ed.) Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE

Sharma, R. (2010). The Leader Who Had No Title (1st ed.). New York, NY: Free Press 

Shirin, H. (2008, April 22). Good Teams Bad Teams. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNG2mlkzkCI