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Followers can have leadership potential

Few things angered me in the workplace more than an employee saying they couldn’t take charge and show leadership because they didn’t have a title.

Tim McGuire
United Media Spokesman Review

Our society gets incredibly hung up on titles and positional leadership. We act as if leadership wisdom is handed out the day that generals, CEOs, editors, governors and mayors get promoted. It is not.

Leadership is not inherited. It is not granted. It is not gift-wrapped. Leadership is a quality that is both learned and earned. It is exercised by Little Leaguers, parents, neighbors and receptionists.

I always told people that they had to show leadership without a title before I could give them one. But people who view leadership as merely barking orders and getting results by force, rather than by influence, never understood that message. They often viewed leadership as either brute force or as some magical and mystical gift that is bestowed from on high.

Too many Americans have a sense of how leaders ought to "look." That usually is an expectation that leaders be tall, good looking and outgoing. Our stereotypes not only limit our selection of leaders but deprive us of the gifts so many potential leaders with different styles can offer us.

I know school principals, coaches and business executives who always struck me as uncomfortably shy when I knew them in high school or college. They are now effective leaders who prove that to be successful you don’t have to be a yeller or screamer.

Several years ago my former company hired a young man right out of college who was confident but not loud. Within months, despite his young age, he established himself as a peer group leader. He carried no title and he had little experience, but he was a person the peer group respected and listened to whenever he spoke. I knew immediately he had a bright leadership future, and he has begun to fulfill that potential.

Every role in every organization requires leadership. Everyone in every organization needs to influence, to initiate action and to take responsibility.

Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander in their book "The Art of Possibility" title one of their chapters "Leading from any Chair." Benjamin Zander, a conductor, talks about the importance of getting leadership from any and every chair in his orchestra. That leadership comes in the form of suggestions and from people accepting that their role is crucial to the orchestra’s teamwork.

I’ve known a lot of bad leaders in my day, and I’ve certainly had some bad leadership days. The thing that most marks that bad leadership is the belief that the leader has all the answers. Leaders who are convinced that without them the enterprises will fail are destined for a major wreck.

Leaders who listen, who share and yet remain accountable win followers, and earning followership is a crucial element of leadership. When one watches leaders on the world stage such a vicious, crazy leaders like Saddam Hussein, or allegedly corrupt leaders like Dennis Koslowski, the former CEO of Tyco, or "winning is everything" leaders like Jim Harrick, the former basketball coach at Georgia, we quickly realize that integrity, a sense of mission and a sense of the common good are also essential to good leadership.

My message here is you should not and cannot exclude yourself from leadership discussions because you do not have a title or position that specifically says you are a leader. And, if you believe that only the confident swaggering folks can be leaders, remember that they have just as many insecurities as you do. They’ve just learned to hide them.

Each one of us is a leader because we can influence, we can initiate, we can take responsibility for making things better in some small way, and we can all bring integrity and a sense of the common good to everything we do.

Tip for your search: Build and create at work this week. Make a vow to yourself you will try to constructively fix everything you would normally criticize. Concentrate on improving processes and behaviors. That’s leadership.

Resource for your search: "The Art of Possibility," by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander (Penguin Books, 2000).

•Tim McGuire is a past president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors and former editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune He can be reached at morethanworkunitedmedia.com.

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news-story.asp?date=053103&ID=s1359210

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