You Must Be A Leader BEFORE You Are Called One and Someone Pays You For It.

One of the Vice Presidents under me said once, “Chris you overwork because you’re the CEO, I’d do that too if I had that Title.” I admonished him on being wrong. I told him no matter what Title I had I would still outwork him, even if he was the CEO. I proved it early in my career when I was promoted over 3 levels of management twice because I outworked people.

A friend of mine always complains about how he doesnt feel like he has power in his job and how weak he feels about interactions with his boss. He wants a promotion and better pay. He doesnt feel like he can be self actualized in his job until his boss makes him feel it. He uses the word “feel” most of the time. He piths and wines about it in a non-leader way suggesting that if the Title and pay is given him, WELL THEN he’ll start acting “leaderish.”

Its always interesting to me that people always want the higher pay of a leader but cant earn the position. Mostly they want it for the higher pay which is probably the wrong reason. Usually for the work put in, a leader is heavily underpaid.

I heard a saying once like “Leaders are Eagles who fly alone and then people start following them.” I’ve never SET OUT to be a leader, in some cases I am a reluctant leader. You must BE a leader to BECOME a leader. No one follows the weak willingly. If you excel beyond the crowd, do the best you can and help others rise up, people will start to see you as a leader. I like working hard and helping people. I share this free blog with you because I love sharing.

I usually got promoted because I acted like a leader helping others and management saw that people liked me and followed me. I’m not worried someone will take my job because I try to do it better than anyone else. I’m not trying to make anyone look bad, I’m usually competing with myself and my goals. Many people get those metrics wrong. I’m usually surprised when someone tells me I’m their leader.” My goal was never to be their leader, they just chose me.

When I was young I started preparing to be a leader by studying the qualities of leaders, I studied CEO’s in Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Barrons, Forbes, Fortune, Success Magazine, etc. I read a multitude of books by successful leaders. I tried to emulate them as best I could and see what qualities I needed. I PREPARED FOR LEADERSHIP, hoping that one day I could be one. I prepared for YEARS.

Being a leader is hard, you have to learn to be a good judge, sometimes what you decide can have long range effects on your followers. There are many pitfalls. Even when I started my own early companies on bootstraps, no one was “paying” me to be be the leader. I still had to “earn” it by staying in business.

In the end, like anything else you want to master, learn to be a leader and what it takes. Its not as easy as you think. I saw another saying that said something like this “Someone may GIVE you a Title, but you have to EARN it everyday.”

Go be a leader and make sure you are a good, honest and fair judge as one.