By Dana Phillips.
When I was in the first grade, my mama started leadership lessons with me, and I didn’t even know it. This amazing, brilliant woman left school in the seventh grade. She pushed us all to be our best and provided all of us with a healthy dose of common sense. More than once, I heard her say, “book learning is good, but common sense will carry you the extra mile.”
One of her favorite sayings that stuck with me was, “A real leader makes everyone else feel like they are the leader.” In this day of hundreds, if not thousands of books on leadership, I am pretty sure that she summed it up well. Making others feel like the leader encompasses servanthood, strength finding, empathy, good communication, delegation, vision, influence, and about a hundred other “irrefutable” leadership dimensions.
Mama did a deep dive with me when I was elected first-grade student council. It comes up now because I have used this process over and over. She let me know that being a representative of the children in my class was more than a popularity contest; I needed to lead by listening. She told me I should ask the boys and girls in my class what they liked about our school and what they didn’t. She told me that if I listened really well, I would hear how to solve problems that I didn’t have to think up, and I could be a voice for my friends. Mama was right. When we listen to enough people, we can listen for solutions and cast a clear and compelling vision.
I learned that to make everyone else feel like a leader, I needed to see their strengths. Notice what other people do well. Look for good qualities in others and it is easy to make them feel like the leader. She taught me to compliment people sincerely and speak their strengths back to them, not for what they could do for me, but because it was the right thing to do. Even today, I can sense that winning, leadership feeling emerge in others as I focus on their strengths.
I want to be a real leader. How about you? Let’s keep the dialogue going about what it takes to be a real leader.
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