What type of leader are you?
We are all leaders, in one way or another. While sometimes leadership comes with a title, and is linked with career or employment, most leadership is separate from organizational and administrative designation and is associated with behavior and other characteristics of being that are meaningful and can meaningfully affect others.
Think about people you would call leaders. Names of presidents or chief executive officers or other public figures may initially come to mind. That list may be followed by another group of names, people who have affected the world through a different type of style or commitment to service or a cause. Some may be alive and some you may have read about in history books. Some may not have led in noble or beneficial ways.
Did you think of anyone whom you encounter or live with on a daily basis? How about someone you don’t know but have noticed, a person who may have no public standing of “significance” or whose name may never have been referenced in a media story or article? Did you consider someone such as a clerk in a grocery store, the driver of a city bus, or a volunteer in a local library?
A good leader does not need a label. She or he does not even need to consider what they do or how they act as leadership. But don’t be fooled by such anonymity: these people lead through an example that can often be a powerful motivator for aspirational change and human development. They do things, act in certain ways, or treat people and the world around them with a respect, a commitment for something beyond themselves, that can be inspiring. They often move through space with an air of reverence, an unassuming presence. They are true servants of community life, of virtuous living. They don’t try to impress anyone.
During employment interviews I’ve had in my career, for jobs that had a certain organizational “importance”, I’ve been asked about leadership and how I define it. My answers were probably more influenced by writings on the topic, books I’ve read, then what I’ve learned – in my heart – matters most. “Servant leadership,” I’ve probably replied. “Leadership based on trust.” There was nothing wrong with these replies; they are fairly standard ones in the leadership lexicon. They nudge intellectually against a conversation of values without falling heartfirst into a dialogue of meaning and purpose.
Too bad I didn’t have the courage to give some different types of leadership examples, such as the ones I noticed this past week during a work trip. There was the young woman at the airport check-in counter who told me why she was going to nursing school, the young man at the hotel check-in counter who laughed without judgment when he mentioned how often he has to help people over the phone navigate to the hotel, and the older woman who led a service dog quietly through a hospital cafeteria, stopping if a sad face brightened at the sight of her four-legged companion. None of these people had fancy work titles. Yet all had a grounded sense of who they were, at that moment, and what they were about. All were leaders because they acted and behaved in an authentic way that I wanted to emulate.
They all had another feature we don’t always encounter in leadership: humility. Leaders don’t have to be big, noisy, and take up a lot of “space”. They can be calm, gentle, and fit comfortably into the allotted moments they receive in our lives. The best leaders understand, consciously or intuitively, that balance – in attitude and in demeanor – is vital if difficult circumstances are to be faced and overcome.
Consider paying attention to leadership that you may see or experience in your regular day. You may be surprised to find it in some unexpected places. You may also discover yourself providing it for others in ways you never realized was possible.
No act of leadership, however small, is without worth.