So, let’s define leadership.

Leadership IS NOT about title, rank, direct reports, or hierarchal power.

Leadership IS about creating change. A person that is not creating change is maybe a satisfactory task and people manager but not a leader.

Being a leader requires the individual to have the courage to take risks, use her/his voice in areas and with topics they are expert, think forward to redefine the future of their work, the department, or organization. It crosses all strata of an organization.

By subscribing to this definition of leadership, everyone in an organization has the opportunity to be a leader. It requires that you continually look at the work you do and make your managers aware of ideas on how your job could be done better or more efficiently, better serve the member, and how co-workers could work more effectively together.

Consider the power of this distributed leadership model.

If everyone at Elfcu were to look at the day-to-day tasks they would perform for the member and the organization, they would recognize they have a lot of authority within the scope of their work. We are all in roles at the credit union because we are meeting or exceeding performance expectations. In our position, we are continually striving to become experts by learning, growing, improving every day. Improving expertise yields increased authority which in turn creates a greater responsibility to use this expertise for improvement.

There was significant power when every one of us used our expertise to inspire a change of process, procedure, and practice or system improvement. As incremental as each of these inspired changes seem, the cumulative impact has incredible organizational significance. Think of the metaphor of receiving a penny, and this penny would double every day. In a brief amount of time, you’d have $1M!

How do I, one person, become seen as a leader?
1. Take 30-60 minutes a week to analyze what you do, how you do it, and what impact your work has on others in the process. The “what impact” is important because there may be dependencies in the work of your teammates that need to be understood. This step may also create awareness of other inefficiencies in the process – it can cascade.
2. This concentrated effort will allow you to act on those “pain points” of our work; those tasks that we do a certain way because that’s the way we always did them, or that’s the way we were taught, and we sense there’s got to be a better way.
3. From this weekly exercise, take your “ah-ha” to your supervisor and discuss this improvement idea

Leadership is about inspiring change, and everyone can become a leader from our seats on the bus. When better to start than NOW? Be the change!!! To research a virtual leadership development class, follow this link: https://leading2leadership.com/product/the-leadership-mentor-a-workshop-for-leadership-excellence/