The Title Can Happen Overnight. Becoming a Leader Takes Longer

I was promoted fairly early in my military career, and at one point I found myself responsible for 26 firefighters and soldiers. At the time, I'm not sure I fully appreciated what that meant. I understood the responsibility from an organizational standpoint, and I certainly understood that people were now looking to me for direction, but looking back on it with the benefit of a lot more experience, I can admit something that isn't particularly flattering. I wasn't ready to lead them. I was young, ambitious, and much more focused on myself than I understood at the time. I knew how to work hard and I wanted to succeed, but most of my attention was on what I needed to do next, how I could advance, and how I was being perceived by the people above me. There is nothing particularly unusual about that for a young person trying to build a career, but there is a problem when you're simultaneously responsible for the careers and development of other people. They deserved more from me than I knew how to give them. That's difficult for me to say because I take a lot of pride in my military service, just as I take a tremendous amount of pride in the career I eventually built in the fire service. But I also don't think there's much value in rewriting the uncomfortable parts of our history simply because we've grown beyond them. If anything, I've come to believe that some of the parts I'm least proud of probably taught me the most. When I left the military and eventually entered the municipal fire service, I had an opportunity to start over in a different way. Instead of immediately trying to become the person in charge again, I spent years being led by other people, and somewhere along the way I started paying much closer attention to what that experience was teaching me. I worked for a lot of different leaders over those years. Some were people I would gladly work for again tomorrow, while others showed me very clearly the kind of leader I never wanted to become. What was interesting was that both groups were valuable to me because I wasn't just watching what they did anymore. I was beginning to understand what their leadership brought out in me and in the people around me. I noticed what happened when someone trusted us enough to give us room to operate, but was still present when we needed direction. I watched leaders who understood the strengths of the people on their crews and didn't seem threatened when someone underneath them knew more about something than they did. I also experienced what it felt like when communication was poor, when ego got involved, or when someone relied almost entirely on their title to create compliance. Over time, all of those experiences started shaping my own understanding of leadership, but they were also teaching me something I had missed when I was younger. Before I could become the kind of leader I wanted to be, I needed to learn how to become a good follower. I think we sometimes hear the word "follower" and assume it means someone who is passive or incapable of leading, and I don't see it that way at all. Some of the best followers I've ever worked with were incredibly capable people who understood how to contribute without needing to be the person receiving the credit. They could take direction without surrendering their judgment, support the larger mission while still asking good questions, and create influence without requiring authority. Learning how to do that changed the way I eventually led. I spent 16 years in the fire service before I decided I was ready to formally step back into leadership. By then, I had a much better understanding of myself than I did as that young military supervisor. I knew where I was strong, but I was also considerably more comfortable recognizing where I wasn't. I had learned that someone on my team was almost always going to be better than me at something, and rather than seeing that as a threat to my leadership, I began to understand that using those strengths was part of my responsibility as a leader. That was a major shift for me. My job wasn't to walk into the room and prove that I was the smartest, strongest, or most capable person there. My job was to understand what the room was capable of and help bring those capabilities together in a way that made the entire team better. I don't think I could have learned that nearly as well if I hadn't spent all of those years on the other side of leadership. Organizations can promote someone overnight. They can change the title on the door, increase the salary, expand the responsibility, and suddenly put a group of people underneath that person's name on an organizational chart. All of that can happen with a single announcement. The development required to actually lead those people doesn't happen nearly as quickly. I learned that the hard way when I was young, and in hindsight, I'm grateful that I eventually became self-aware enough to recognize it. I had been given a leadership position long before I understood what leadership really required. The title happened quickly. Becoming the leader I wanted to be took considerably longer. MichaelGreenwalt.net Nice Picture, insightful article Mike!! We're coming up on 25 years since September 11th, and I've been thinking about it a little differently lately; as… Still Needed: I Don't Want to Write This One Alone I've been working quietly on my next book, and until now almost… The first time I asked myself who I was becoming, I didn’t know I was asking it. I was standing in a National Guard… Everyone is talking about what AI can do. Nobody is asking what it's doing to you. You have a self-leadership problem. 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