Would I make a good leader?

By Jo Miller, CEO, Women's Leadership Coaching Inc., Cedar Rapids

When we talk about being a leader, it often sounds as though you need to dwell on gigantic, lofty issues - it's easy to feel overwhelmed and not know where to begin.

From the many career-related questions people send me, one that stood out came from a woman in a midlevel role at a large corporation. She emailed: “My question comes in two parts. 1) How do I know if I would make a good leader? 2) Can you learn to be a good leader?”

Early in my career, I turned down an offer to take my dream job - my first true management position. Despite working hard to position myself as the ideal candidate, I felt the stakes were too high if I failed. I didn't know if I had the chops to succeed.

The person asking this question is going through a similar experience. She is waiting on the sidelines, looking for confirmation that she will make a good leader.

What if we were to substitute the word ‘leader' for ‘swimmer,' and instead ask:

• How do I know if I would make a good swimmer?
• Can you learn to be a good swimmer?

Imagine going to a swimming pool for the very first time and waiting at the edge, never dipping a toe in the water, while looking for evidence that you're a natural swimmer. Now really, how much sense does that make?

Most people aren't born swimmers, and we aren't born leaders, either. A few lucky individuals were born with natural leadership talents, but the rest of us learn it by diving in and thrashing about, practicing like crazy and finding our strengths along the way.

So how do you know if you will make a good leader? One place to start is to understand what it means to be a leader.

There are so many definitions of leader and leadership that the last thing the world needs is one more. But I'll share mine, anyway.

Years ago, I was preparing to deliver a leadership workshop for 30 women in a Canadian telecommunications company. They were “high potentials” who had been hand-selected by their management and told they had to go to training.

Needless to say, not all were happy to sacrifice two days for another soft-skills training when they were understaffed and had a mountain of work to get through.

A few days before the class, I was reviewing their answers to a pre-workshop questionnaire. One of the questions I asked was, “Why is being a leader important to you?”

Reading the responses, I felt dispirited because apparently being a leader was not all that important to them. They just wanted to make the biggest difference they could every day.

Then came my “aha” moment. This was a pragmatic new definition of what a leader is.

Being a leader does not mean having a management job title, a team of employees or climbing to a certain grade level. A leader is someone who is committed to making a greater difference than one person can make alone.

Regardless of your current job title, do you aspire to make a positive impact? Do you want to make the greatest difference you can?

If so, you will reach a point where you want to accomplish something bigger than you can achieve on your own. You will need to articulate your idea effectively and get collaborators on board.

To learn to be a leader, pick something to lead. It could be a project at work, or it could be a project with friends, in your community or church, with family, a professional organization or a charitable cause.

Choose something that you care about, that is a bigger project than you could ever complete alone. It must be a project you complete by managing, not doing, the work.

No matter how the project turns out, do a self-assessment on how well you helped everyone to stay engaged and motivated while they worked toward a common goal.

Pick another project. Repeat.

After you've done this a few times on increasingly complex projects, stop to reflect on these two great questions:

• How do I know if I would make a good leader?
• Can I learn to be a good leader?

Then move on to something easy, such as, say, negotiating world peace.