"You Don't Need a Title to Be a Leader"

Opening myself up to some vulnerability this morning about leadership. I just returned from a leadership conference for Executive Women International (www.ewiconnect.com) in Spokane, Washington this past week. Over the past four years I've had the honor of serving the organization as a board member and helped our organization face some interesting and challenging business situations pertaining to growth.

Over 11 years as a member, I gradually found myself serving on committees, leading others, having dynamic conversations and building life-long relationships with professional women across the US and Canada. As members, we all believe in our mission and our vision and growing our organization across the country. After being selected to serve at a national level, the expectations of your leadership increase because more is at stake. There are more people depending on you to hear their voice, solve their problems, and help them learn what they need to learn in order to fulfill our purpose. You do what you know how to do, you challenge yourself to keep learning and developing skills in the role you are serving in, and you do what needs to be done because your peers are depending on you to lead them forward. Being in such a position has responsibility and service written all over it. It's not something any board member takes lightly when they are a part of an organization such as EWI.

Over the weekend, my board role came to an end. All of the effort, time, strategy, phone calls every month, committee to-do lists, follow-ups and involvement have come to a halt. It almost seems like an activity hangover because there is now space to focus time and attention in other ways.

As I reflect, however, I recall the words of our conference keynote speaker, Mark Sanborn, author of the book "You Don't Need a Title to Be a Leader." Mark stressed that each of us are leaders in our own regard, regardless of the role, or position, or title we possess. The resounding message delivered in his speech was his definition of leadership - an invitation to greatness that we extend to others.

Think about those words. As it pertains to my situation, I think about what is ahead now that this leadership role has come to an end for me. The title and responsibility have been removed. The time has been freed. Lives have been touched and our membership grew while I served. It took time, tenacity, resilience and vision to get our organization moving in the direction we chose to go. And now what? Now I choose to move forward and continue to lead others without the title.

What does that mean exactly? Perhaps it means that I need to continue showing others that they can be more than they are right now. Maybe it means that I need to coach people up at a higher level, both in numbers and in achievement. Or maybe it means I can truly do more of what I love in building better business leaders through my profession. At the end of the day. the takeaway is that regardless of where we are in life and how we are serving, we can all serve others and invite people to be great at what they do. We can listen, lead, serve and help by always looking at how to help others improve and grow their strengths and improve upon their weaknesses. We can all be better and we are all great at something.

So, what is your responsibility as it relates to leadership? Are you doing everything you can to serve those that look to you for your vision and support? Are you choosing to take ownership of where you are going in your business and your life? Who is helping lead you to where you want to go? You are capable of more and leading your life as you choose. The choice is yours.

I welcome your thoughts and comments. Please connect with me or email me at [email protected]. "Lead on"... as Mark would say.