We find ourselves in positions during our career where we do not believe in the vision, the direction, the actions or the values in our leader and where they are taking the organisation.
Throughout literature it is determined that there is not one specific definition of leadership. However, a simple definition that we believe to be true is, “Leadership is a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal”.
Furthermore it is clear that leadership is not a title, nor a job. Leadership is not a mandatory obligation for a person of power and status to enact, although it is expected from their followers. So how do we portray ourselves as a leader in situations where we may not be given the title, responsibility or the power?
Kilmoski & Amos (2014) suggest what I like to now call the ‘The 3 C’s of Leadership’ – Competence, Confidence and Commitment.
Competence
In its simplest form, do you know your stuff? This is the ability to hold the relevant knowledge, skills and abilities to be a leader. It is made up of emotional and social competencies.
Emotional competency entails the ability to deal with setbacks, emotional control and self direction. Lack of emotional competence would indicate an inability to recognise your followers’ feelings and regulate your personal behaviour. Failure to do so will see little opportunity for you to be an effective leader.
Social leadership competency allow you to truly understand the tasks that must be performed, the needs and values of followers, and when action must be taken.
If you believe you are competent as a leader you should look for opportunities to demonstrate these competencies.
Confidence
This is broken down into 2 aspects of confidence. Generalised and leadership self-efficacy.
Generalised self-efficacy is the confidence that you have in yourself, your self-belief. To act in situations where there is a level of risk. This is a leading key indicator of emerging leaders because it requires you to voluntarily put yourself in a vulnerable situation.
A caveat to this to a deeper degree, is that it showcases you are confident in your own ability rather than whether or not you actually possess the ability.
Leadership self-efficacy is one’s confidence and drive in your ability to be a leader. How effective are you at influencing, direction giving and motivating others.
Leadership requires discretion and sometimes acting as a leader requires the ability, not to act. In some cases, leaders can act prematurely to demonstrate that they are in fact ‘leading’. This would indicate overconfidence and be detrimental to the situation.
Through experience and observation of bad leaders, confidence is where these bad leaders can be identified. Bad leaders will often mask their insecurities through this segment by ‘games’ such as one-upmanship or living the ‘fake it til you make it’ strategy. This demonstrates a lack of self-awareness and self-knowledge.
Commitment
Do you want to be a leader? Will you do what is required to be a leader?
The reading suggests that there are 2 motivators to have leadership commitment. Social and normative based & affective and identity based commitment.
Acting as a leader through social and normative is based on your self-applied responsibility to lead your followers. This comes with a more emotional attachment to your followers. You display empathy and compassion through your leadership style. This also comes with risk that you are to act in a certain manner or show loyalty in certain situations to your followers.
Acting as a leader through affective and identity based commitment is based on your self-talk that you are a leader because that is you and that is what you do. This style removes emotions from situations and you believe that process should be followed in all situations. You are dictated by your moral code to define your actions in situations due to your identity.
Leadership is not easy. There is an expectation from your followers to be ‘always on’. It requires situational knowledge. Do you have the context of the situation including the parties involved, their feelings, the state of the relationship and the knowledge of the task at hand? Do you have the 3 Cs? Most importantly, you need to possess self-knowledge and self-awareness in order to truly lead. It starts with you.
