S6 - The Inner Life of a Leader - E5 - Leadership and Identify

When people think about leadership, they often think about position.

Authority, responsibility, decision making.

A manager, a director, a vice president, a project manager, a team leader.

And those roles matter.

But a

leadership role does not automatically make someone a leader.

A title gives you responsibility.

It may give you authority.

It may give you influence.

But identity is something different.

Identity is how you understand yourself, what you believe about yourself, what you value, what you stand for, how you behave, especially when nobody is watching.

And over time, those things begin to form an identity.

You stop simply doing leadership, and you

begin becoming a leader.

There is a difference between doing something and becoming something.

You can perform the actions of leadership.

You can run meetings, make decisions, set expectations, give direction,

hold people accountable.

But leadership becomes much more deeper.

When those behaviors become part of who you are, think about the difference.

A person can act with integrity because they know people are watching.

Another

person acts with integrity because that is who they are.

Those may look identical from the outside, but internally,

they are very different.