Change Your Mindset #9 - Leadership is not about job title

If you think that Leadership is strictly about who holds the highest job title in the Bank, then its time for you to change your mindset. During a couple recent Leadership Discovery engagements with clients it became clear that many of the staff members view leadership exactly this way. This way of viewing leaders deflects responsibility away from them, keeps them out of the communication loop and promotes a disempowered view they may have of themselves that they are powerless to evoke change in the organization.


Wrong! --- Anybody can be a leader if they are supported in doing so and if they view themselves as a leader. It is time for you to encourage and draw out leadership behavior in your colleagues and team members. The way you do this is to focus on qualities, characteristics which are common in many leaders. They are present in all of us, if we wake up to them. Vision and support are just two leadership characteristics which you could help cultivate in your team.

I am reminded of an analogy that people who are successful in losing weight, don’t go on a diet, they change their lifestyle. The same is true for leadership. It is time for you to go on your leadership “diet”, or better yet, “lifestyle”. So after your read this blog post, I want you to pick two team members and ask them to identify two people (living or dead) who they think embody a leader. Not only will this give you a feel for how they pick leaders, but you can then ask them why they picked those individuals and what characteristics those people embody.


This process will help wake up the dialogue and the individual awareness at your institution of leaders, leadership characteristics and leadership behavior.


Get going!