Pre-Leadership

The practice of leadership begins before you become a leader. Simply put, if you desire to become a leader you will never be one unless you display leadership capabilities. Otherwise, people will never begin to follow your lead nor will you be given a position of leadership. Becoming a leader is not just something that you get appointed to one day. Becoming a leader is a process. That process is one-day-at-a-time leadership. This really hit me like a ton of bricks as I reviewed my notes from Lance Secretan’s Inspire! What Great Leaders Do presentation from the WFS conference. While doing this I reflected back on a conversation that I had with a colleague earlier that day. She had just attended an all-day workshop on leadership by another lecturer. We were trying to reconcile the role that personal leadership played for the employee instead of the manager. It dawned on me that leadership is something that you can practice in your everyday life to gain the respect and admiration of all those that surround you. You do not need to be a CEO to be a true leader. I read over the CASTLE principles of leadership given by Secretan (which I outlined in a previous post). I realized that if I focused on improving these attributes in my everyday life I truly would be a leader. If you practice these principles with conviction others will see it. When they do, you will gain their respect and they will follow your lead because they know you are a leader.