By: Luke Freeman
Principle, Leadership Design

In one sense, we’re surrounded by leaders. From our first breath we experienced parents or guardians who were in positions of authority in our lives. Growing up we were influenced by teachers, coaches, religious and club leaders, and others who guided the activity of our lives. Today we’re connected to supervisors, executive leaders, local or tribal officials, and national leaders who direct our work. All those in positions of authority are what we call “positional leaders”. Whether we have a rebellious anti-authoritarian streak, or a need to please, we’ve been learning our whole lives about how others lead and building our own unconscious leadership philosophies from these positional leaders. 

But if we stop and think about it, true leadership still seems scarce. Most of us have a story or two of a positional leader who did things differently. They may be a special family member who seemed to see us in a different light, that one special boss who encouraged our development when we were new to the world of work, or a coach who helped us become more without making us feel less. These few people stand out because of how different they are from most of the positional leaders around us. 

I’m convinced that no one wants to be a boss who team members complain about to their spouse at night. If you want to be a leader worth following, or maybe even one of the few great leaders who leave behind a better world than they were given, I encourage you to reflect on three counterintuitive principles. 
 

Leadership is for everyone.  

Some people may be named a leader by receiving a promotion, but organizations who consider everyone a leader create cultures of ownership and continuous improvement. I believe that leadership isn’t defined by title, but is a teachable behavior consisting of three steps: 
 

1. Notice something that could be better. This could be noticing a piece of trash on the ground, or noticing the emotional atmosphere when we enter a room (are people engaged in conversation? is everyone on their phones?). At enterprise scale, noticing could be observing that there are people with authority and resources who could correct a problem within your organization if someone brought them a clear plan and explained how they could help. 
2. Choose. Choosing is making a value judgment; deciding that the thing you noticed is a wrong that should be righted. Whether you’re aware of them or not, your values determine what wrongs you notice and which ones you choose as priorities. You gain power when you know your values and consciously apply them to issues that you notice. 
3. Act. Unfortunately, noticing and choosing are of little worth without an act of courageous leadership. In my work I always try to give emerging, high potential, and executive leaders practice acting to solve real issues. Practice is the only way to truly gain the habit of intentional leadership. 
    

All leadership training is retraining.  

In my work with tribal enterprises across the country I often hear “we’ve never done leadership training before”. But the truth is that everyone who is leading has learned their approach from somewhere. Lessons in leadership may have come from a parent, or a boss from their first job, but it’s hard to deny that there are always systems within the organization that have trained certain behaviors from leaders. Until we admit we’ve learned our current approach from somewhere, it will be very difficult for us to stop unhelpful leadership behaviors and practice new ones. The same goes for leaders we are developing: until we stop accidentally tolerating, or even rewarding, harmful leadership behaviors, it will be very difficult to train new approaches to leadership. 

Never. Stop. Learning. 

No matter the skills we’ve learned so far in our leadership journeys, there’s always another level of leadership intentionality to achieve. First we learn to lead ourselves. We then add skills to lead a team. Managers and directors must learn new approaches to lead and develop other leaders. Executive leaders must dive deep into their personal purpose and values to have any hope of providing meaningful vision for an enterprise. At each of these levels we must let go of old practices and refocus our time on new disciplines. The journey of intentional leadership only ends when we choose to stop learning. 

Ram Charan says “this is an era in which the demand for leadership greatly exceeds the supply.” If we are to meet the demand we must view leadership as an ever-expanding discipline. My hope for you is that you aspire to differentiate your leadership approach from the over-abundance of leaders defined by position, and become a truly transformational force in the lives of those you influence every day. 

Originally published in TribalHub Magazine - Fall 2022