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Lead From Any Seat
According to the tiny digital clock in front of the mayor’s seat to my left the time was 5:58, two minutes to go before the gavel would shake our audience of citizens and staff to attention. In a hundred twenty seconds or so the Council members, five including the mayor would sit up straight and shift their weight in their high-backed chairs in anticipation of standing for the opening prayer followed by the pledge of allegiance.
We’re small town
At one minute to go I shuffled my papers, adjusted the monitor on my notebook computer, and traded my regular eye glasses for a cheap pair of “cheaters.”
The one-term city council member sitting in the chair to my right leaned in my direction and in a stage whisper asked, “Are you running for mayor?
“No. Why?”
“Well, you’re out front on the Arcadia Theatre project, the River Trail project, you’re pushing a branding initiative… I just figured you’re running for mayor.”
Whamm!
Our mayor is anything but subtle when it comes to wielding the gavel. He loves that gavel.
Had the mayor not been such a stickler for staying on schedule I would had time to tell my council colleague that ‘you can lead from any seat.’
You don’t have to be the mayor or the general, the boss or the president. You don’t have to be the chief resident or the charge nurse. You can lead if you are a citizen, a patient, a customer, and I’ve even seen young children lead their parents, sometimes in a good way!
If you really can lead from any seat why don’t more people do it?
First, let’s recognize that there are many people leading from unlikely places. Almost every group has at least one informal leader. These are the ‘popular’ kids in school, the respected old hand at work, the volunteer who sometimes keeps an entire organization walking on egg shells lest she be offended. (I didn’t say all leadership was good leadership!)
I suspect that there one big reason why more people don’t lead from the chair they are already in: It’s just not their nature to lead.
There has to be more to it than that but I think the nature of the individual is the dominating factor. If there is a second most important controlling factor it is the situation. People who by their nature are inclined to go with the flow and let others lead can, if the situation demands, take control.
Take my wife. Please! (My apologies to Buns and to Henny Youngman.) Buns can, when the situation demands it, be a total take-charge and take no prisoners battlefield leader. But it’s not her nature to lead. She is, in most situations, the world’s greatest support person.
Another reason why some folks don’t take formal leadership is fear (sometimes doing a stand-in for intelligence… it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to recognize that the first to the front is the first to get shot at!) Stand-up, be counted, get clobbered!
If you are leading a team, here are a few things to think about:
Do they ever influence your behavior without you being aware?
(How long has this been going on!!)
Who are the informal leaders on your team?
In what situation are they likely to lead?
Will they have more value to the team if left to lead informally?
Could they make good leaders if promoted?
Which leader, the formal or the informal, has the most power?
(Power defined as the ability to make things happen…or not!)
There is one thing that makes informal leaders different from the CEO selected by the search committee: informal leaders are selected by those who follow. So the final question to consider is this: what do you have to be among the chosen few?
Next time: Children of the Corn, a real-life example of motivating a youthful workforce!