You are a leader, so act like one

The year was 2016, it was the year I was ascending to the fourth floor. With no definite career having given up the same to serve my family, I was in the middle of my self-discovery journey and pondering many issues about life. 
It was at this point that one of my friends on Facebook shared the quote from my now mentor John Maxwell that said, “Leadership is all about influence, nothing more nothing less.” 

I immediately looked up the meaning of the word influence and what came up was “to affect or change someone or something in an indirect but usually important way”. 
Wait a minute, I thought, I must be changing someone right now. At the time, our children were 10 and eight years respectively. As I reflected further, I realised that there were more people I was influencing. 
It was the 104 subscribers who had raised their hands as I launched the Fulfilled Life Blog early that year. By this point, I felt myself grow in confidence as it finally dawned on me that I too could be counted among leaders.

I hope that after reading my story of how I came to accept the title of leader, you too are beginning to count the number of people you are currently influencing and jumping onto the wagon of leaders determined to make a difference in the lives of those they shepherd. 
The reality is that we all influence someone because the first person you influence in life is the one who looks back at you in the mirror every morning. 
I believe it is for this reason that Stephen Covey in his famous book the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People introduces us to the inside out approach which simply states that “private victories precede public victories”. 
What this principle espouses is that the first person we all need to lead effectively is ourselves. When we make and keep promises to ourselves then it becomes easy to keep the promises we make to others. 

The inside out approach also reminds us that it is not of much use to put personality ahead of character or to try to improve our public image before we have done the inner work and become a better version of ourselves.
In his book Developing the Leader Within You, John Maxwell refers to one of his favourite leadership proverbs which is “he who thinketh he leadeth and hath no one following him is only taking a walk”. 
For us to continue to grow in our leadership, we need to ensure that we have people behind us, and this can only happen after we have won the internal battles which threaten to rob us of our ability to influence. 

It follows, therefore, that instead of us mistakenly defining leadership as the ability to obtain position X, we need to flip the script and remember that “a leader is one who knows the way, goes the way and shows the way”. 
This is what will prompt us to ensure that we can attract followers and then lead them effectively. 
Finally, let us be willing to do the work required of us to develop our influence by answering these questions:
1. What are you going to do to develop the leader within you?
2. Who are you currently influencing and how can you serve them, so they too become a better leader?

The author, Rosette Wamambe is a transformational leadership coach with the Maxwell Certified Leadership Team    

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