Leaders influence people at every level. Some lead thousands or even millions, others lead one or two. The success of their leadership isn't found in the number of people in their "chain of command", but how they influence those for whom they are responsible.
Leaders influence people at every level. Some lead thousands or even millions, others lead one or two. The success of their leadership isn't found in the number of people in their "chain of command", but how they influence those for whom they are responsible.
When I first wrote this post, my then 24 year old daughter was a fire-fighter and EMT. She's still new at the job, and is also attending school full-time in the medic program at University of Cincinnati. To say she's an adrenaline junkie would be pretty accurate! She runs half-marathons, has studied jiu-jitsu (and almost killed me in a choke hold in the process), rides a Repsol motorcycle and runs **into** fires instead of away from them.
With interests like those, she's obviously in amazing condition. What's really interesting to me is that she's motivating (read leading) the mostly volunteer firefighters around her to be more fit. One in particular has lost over 100 pounds since joining the workout routines she has set up. Both men and women, all of them older than she, are responding to her leadership in fitness.
Leaders take us where we'd otherwise not go.
Think about an experience in your own life where someone motivated you to go in a different, perhaps more difficult, direction in your life. Are you better for it? Probably.
One of my favorite movies of all time is Groundhog Day. Bill Murray's character re-lives one day, over and over until he gets it right. In the process of realizing the futility of the direction he was heading in his life, day after day passes until he breaks, and a truly good person emerges.
That's what leaders who exhibit this characteristic do. They take us where we'd never go on our own. Sometimes into danger. Sometimes to new heights of influence.