Leadership Starts with Your Own Journey

I often hear people say leadership is a journey, not a destination. While I agree in principle with that, I believe it’s a journey with distinctive with many different stages, and each stage can require different skills and that what works at one stage may not work at the next. My journey of leadership starts from being a contributor to a manager. The question of how we decide to lead is determined by our own personal decision in how we want to "show up" or be recognized as a leader. In other words, it is up to us to define our leadership presence. Leaders need to be present physically, emotionally and mentally. Leadership presence is alignment of the heart, mind and soul and comes from within and should be developed. It is a decision about how we want to be effective. It is a decision to commit time and energy to develop our own unique personal effectiveness as a leader. Leadership presence comes from knowing where we stand and what we stand for.

I do not claim to be an expert on the subject of leadership. All we can do is aspire to such status and continue to ensure we are capable of true leadership and developing ourselves to this ?. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have been exposed to a variety of leadership styles over my own leadership journey. From each influencer I have had the gift of learning from and leveraging those experiences in order to shape my own brand of leadership behavior.?It is on this basis that I wanted to offer a small incident which was my personal observation about the true leader.

I've been taking a bus to my office for years. Most passengers keep to themselves and no one ever talks to anyone else.

About a year ago, an elderly man got on the bus and said loudly to the driver, 'Good morning!' Most people looked up, annoyed, and the bus driver just grunted. The next day the man got on at the same stop and again he said loudly, 'Good morning!' to the driver. Another grunt. By the fifth day, the driver relented and greeted the man with a semi-cheerful 'Good morning!' The man announced, 'My name is Benny,' and asked the driver, 'What's yours?' The driver said his name was Ram.

That was the first time any of us heard the driver's name and soon people began to talk to each other and say hello to Ram and Benny. Soon Benny extended his cheerful 'Good morning!' to the whole bus. Within a few days his 'Good morning!' was returned by a whole bunch of 'Good mornings' and the entire bus seemed to be friendlier. People got to know each other more day by day.

"If a leader is someone who makes something happen, Benny was our leader in friendliness."

A month ago, Benny didn't get on the bus and we haven't seen him since. Everyone began to ask about Benny and lots of people said he may have relocated to another place. No one knew what to do and the bus got awful quiet again. So last week, I started to act like Benny and say, 'Good morning!' to everyone and they cheered up again. I guess I'm the leader now. I hope Benny comes back to see what he started.

So, when you are called to lead, aspire to be a true leader with a clear directional vision, with the courage to accept responsibility for actions and outcomes, with a strong passion to limit, streamline, and even destroy bureaucracy, and with the courage to stand against the loud but unwise crowd.