Leading from where You are

Leadership is every man’s calling. It is God’s original plan that man rules over the works of His hands. Leadership is man’s natural mandate. The mandate is still more relevant in our days now more than ever before. So wherever you find yourself, the instinct to lead is always inherent.

Leadership has been generally defined as the ability to influence others in achieving worthwhile goals. While many myths has been built around the subject leadership, this write-up is intended to help readers in realizing that not only can they lead, they can do it wherever they find themselves in life; most especially in corporate organizations.

The big and controversial question has always been “are leaders born or made”? While it is generally agreed that leadership traits are inborn, many have come to agree that leadership can be learnt.

Therefore this write-up will focus more on leadership in the corporate world. Truth is that you can lead from wherever you are in your organization. This simply means, you lead both vertically and horizontally. It involves leading other leaders ahead of you, subordinates who are below or even your contemporaries. This is what John Maxwell, the leadership expert, calls 360^o degree leadership.

Leadership in this manner requires that you develop skills and learn principles that make such possible.

I will like to focus a bit on situations and circumstances that makes leading in the corporate world impossible especially when the leader is not the No. 1 leader in the organization.

Most difficult to overcome is the challenge of not accepting the vision of the organization as yours and running along with it or even championing the cause yourself.

Next to the challenge of championing the cause of a vision, is finding alignment with the vision. This is made possible by adapting yourself to the ideals of the vision. After resolving this great issues of championing, aligning and adapting a vision, is the issue of adding value to the vision you did not start.

Championing the vision of an organization you did not start begins with you placing the needs of the organization above your personal needs.

Next to placing the organization’s needs above your personal needs is to keep the vision before the people and take personal responsibility for achieving the vision.

Finally, adding value to a vision that is not yours can set you up for your best time in leadership, especially when you lead in an organization where you are not the No. 1 leader.

At the point when you start adding value to the vision of your organization, you have crossed a level, that many people typically find difficult to cross and consequently making them to remain stagnant in their leadership journey.

Leadership is a journey, and you are expected to make success at every point along the line.

Yinka Adesanya (2348023068849) is a facilitator with Daystar Leadership Academy.