You Can Be a Leader: Leadership Principles to Achieve Excellence

Leadership Beginnings and Pitfalls

My recommendation for you after reading this chapter is to sit back in a quiet place, be introspective, and discover your own leadership beginnings.

First, think about why you have the urge to become a leader. Not everyone wants to be a leader. Do you want to be the shepherd or the sheep? Much of the working population is happy following a leader. If you're not a sheep, what is your driving factor?

Once you know why you want to lead, take some time and focus on recalling those early leadership traits that came easily to you, along with the traits you had difficulty mastering. Ask yourself why some traits seemed to come so easy, while others needed work, or simply didn't exist in your psyche or personality.

Once you have identified your strong and weak traits, move on to what you do well now and where you need work. Think of your own personal examples of how you overcame some of your early difficult leadership challenges. Use this personal reflection time to think of ways to improve your leadership skills and traits.

So where does leadership start?

Let's go to the very beginning. Some people are born with strong leadership traits. You can see them coming a mile away; they enter a room and their charismatic personality immediately dominates everyone's attention. People instinctively want to follow these leaders and many times actually crave attention or praise from them. I have worked with only a few people who possess this natural-born leadership skill. I am not ashamed to say, I am jealous of how easy leadership seems for them. This type of leader can harness the power of their personality to inspire their people and increase the productivity of their company. Usually they are great bosses.

You may not have been born with an outgoing personality. This doesn't mean you can't have the same effect as these leaders; it just takes more effort on your part. You need to work harder to have the same positive impact on a group.

One thing you need to develop in yourself is a sense of situational awareness. Situational awareness (SA) is the ability to analyze what happened, what is happening now, and how it will affect you or your company in the future. You can use situational awareness for short-term or long-term planning. SA gives you the ability to analyze and determine what is going to work for you at a specific moment in time.

Learn to read your audience and apply the appropriate lexicon for the situation. Do you need to use personal, casual, formal, business, or academic communication? Be sincere and be yourself as much as possible. You just need to be friendly, approachable, and know what aspects of your personality to use for the given situation. We all have those good traits buried somewhere inside of us. Smile, stand tall, and find those good traits within yourself.

My leadership training began in the Boy Scouts of America. With the anti-gay and nationalistic neo-military controversy swirling around the organization, this sounds like a very old-fashioned place for a boy to start learning. By now you are picturing a slightly overweight kid with a bad haircut, wearing a horrible off green uniform with long shorts, long wool socks, and a scarf around his neck. Yes, that is part of the whole organization. But don't forget: Things like a terrible uniform bring a sense of belonging, just as the awards proudly displayed by these young men on their uniforms give them a sense of accomplishment and pride.

Early on as a Boy Scout, I became a leader in the organization through a promotion to assistant patrol leader and finally moved up to hold a position as a patrol leader. I quickly learned leading young teenagers is similar to the proverbial herding of cats. I was challenged by short attention spans, not having any real adult authority, and leading kids who wanted to play instead of be led. Through trial and error, determination, and force of will, I learned how to herd the cats.