What is Leadership?

As a trusted leadership advisor to the world’s best-known healthcare organizations, I’ve had a front-row seat to the professional and personal development of people throughout organizational ecosystems. In the many years that I’ve been guiding individuals and shaping cultures, I’ve come to realize that there is a fundamental misunderstanding about the definition of leadership. Let’s explore this.

We’ve been falsely taught that a leader is someone with a powerful title who has the ability to order people around from their corner office.

While leadership does include the ability to make choices that directly impacts other people’s lives, leadership is not a one-way street from the top down. It’s a skill that requires demonstrating vulnerability in the name of circumferential accountability. When leadership is accountable to people, people become accountable to leadership. There needs to be trust because, if there isn’t, there’s no currency to do the work that needs to be done.

To me, leadership is the understanding of self to be in the service of others. It requires introspection and a deep desire to become better for a greater reason beyond yourself. Leadership is a pledge and commitment to harness self-awareness and positively contribute to the people around you—no matter where you are in your organizational ecosystem.