How can someone with the powerful title, the right look, and the impressive background, never actually inspire a soul?

It’s because leadership has never been about authority or power. Leadership comes from your social influence, and your ability to use that influence to get maximum productivity out of others. Leadership is getting your team to follow you into hell wearing gasoline suits – and being excited about it.

Earning Social Influence

The right question is never, “Why isn’t someone following me?” It’s, “What reasons have I given someone to want to follow me?” If you aren’t learning and growing, you can’t reasonably expect someone to think of you as a leader. A leader is at the front. They’re progressive. They’re innovative. They’re continuously learning.

It’s so easy to fall into the trap of learning by chance or learning on the job, but that’s only good enough if you want to almost lead. To make the transition from almost a leader to actually a leader, learning has to be intentional to the point of becoming who you are as a person.

And if all that sounds like a lot of work, it is. The pic at the top of this blog post is not some random image of books found on the web, it’s my next 6 months of free time. So yeah, it’s hard, but if you love the challenge of getting the most out of others, it’s absolutely worth it.