Best practice to leadership and taking charge.

What's in it for me? Don't wait for permission to lead.

Are you hitting your goals in the workplace? If you're anything like most people, you probably think you could achieve more if you were given more resources or more control. Perhaps you daydream about being promoted to a leadership position, where you could finally start changing the way things are done. 

But the truth is, you don't need to wait to become a manager to make a big splash in the office. You can begin leading your department or your organization right now, regardless of where you sit in the company food chain, whether you want to improve a particular process or promote a better working environment.

How can you achieve your goals in the workplace? You might assume that the more authority you have, the easier it will be. If you're a manager, say, then you have a team of people at your disposal to do what you tell them to do. But in reality, it's not as simple as all that. In today's workplace, you should look beyond your official team if you want to make an impact in your organization. 

I have seen from experience that exercising your authority isn't going to help you achieve all your goals but rather a collaborative approach filled with a lot of respect for colleagues and the human capital that you manage.

Consider a scenario in which a Human Resources Director is tasked with introducing a new bonus pay system across her organization. The Director instructs her HR team to implement the new system, but before long, she encounters a problem: the Sales Director doesn't like the idea, and has decided to set up his own independent bonus pay program for his department. So even though the HR director has effective control over her own team, she still cannot achieve her goal of a company-wide rollout. 

If you were in the HR Director's difficult position, your instinctive response might be to go to your own boss and complain that you don't have enough control over the situation to achieve your objective. After all, you have no authority over the sales team. You cannot tell the Sales Director what to do, and without his cooperation, you cannot implement the new bonus system. 

Often, the people who can help you get what you want are beyond your direct control. So how should you respond when you find yourself in a situation like the one facing our beleaguered HR Director? Well, instead of seeking to control more people or resources, you'll need to focus on building authentic and mutually beneficial relationships with the coworkers whose cooperation you need. In the case of our HR Director, she'll need to start treating the Sales Director as a friend, rather than as an adversary who can be bested. The two Directors need to sit down with one another to explore why their conflict has arisen, and how the bonus program can be implemented in a way that works for the sales team as well as the HR team. 

The first step to leading without authority is proactive enough to identify a problem. I have always been a preacher of proactiveness to my team regardless of educational backgrounds and culture. I have noticed that some people respond faster and take the opportunity of the freedom to do and show what is possible with them before they are officially confirmed for such a role in the organization.

What do you do when you're keen to take on a leadership position, but your bosses don't think you're ready yet? He might say that you haven't been with the organization long enough, or that you don't, however, have the skills to be a manager. In this case, there's only one thing you can do – start leading anyway, even without authority. 

That's what Zina, a talented young doctor, decided to do. Zina wanted to step into a leadership role so that she could transform her hospital's approach to patient care. Frustratingly, she was told that she hadn't worked at the hospital long enough to become a manager. 

Fortunately, though, Zina didn't wait for anyone's permission to start leading the hospital toward positive change.

More specifically, look for a problem in your workplace that no one is currently addressing, and that's negatively affecting people's ability to work effectively. For example, Zina identified a constant shortage of medical equipment in her ER department. The problem, it seemed, was that Devon, the nurse responsible for medical equipment, never seemed to know when supplies were running low. 

Once you've identified such a problem, you can be the one to step up and solve it.

Of course, this can sound like a daunting prospect. Without any authority over her colleague, Zina wondered how she could persuade Devon to work with her on this issue. He had a prickly reputation in his department and was often defensive when people questioned his approach. 

But if you're trying to lead without authority, you shouldn't start by confronting people about their wrongdoing. Instead, begin by only getting to know them, so that they can start to trust you. Zina started by inviting Devon to lunch, asking him about his life outside of work, and sharing stories about her own experiences in medicine. Once the two had built a rapport, Devon stopped being defensive and shared with her the issues he was facing with the medical equipment. Then she helped him solve the problem. 

Even though Zina wasn't officially a leader yet, she had already started to do the job of a manager. So if you're looking to skip the queue when it comes to promotions, start proving to your bosses that you can take the initiative, solve problems, and lead people in your work toward positive change.

I will conclude by reminding us that we have the choice to make things happen even if others are not doing so for us. So take a chance and act on your dreams.