Last week we engaged with global-scale leadership moments in which country prime ministers and presidents make leadership decisions about how we live or die — slowly from hunger and deprivation, or in Armageddon.
This week we tackle a leadership moment that is at the other end of the scale because it is about you and me in our day-to-day lived lives.
We often miss this moment because we don’t see it as a leadership moment. However, it is and it lies at the core of our leadership.
The leadership moment arises when we disown our social agency, which is our capability to think, act and choose in all our circumstances — whoever and wherever we are.
This renunciation of our social agency is expressed in a variety of ways but is constructed around the notion that:
One person cannot make a difference.
This idea generally arrives in our minds and behaviours through one of four ageless refrains that are couched as follows:
- The categorical personal statement: I cannot possibly make a difference.
- The emphatic general statement that sees no role for themselves: One person cannot make a difference.
- The quizzical question: Can I make a difference?
- The pass-the-buck statement of the serial social delinquent: It is someone else’s business.
While I could reiterate all the smart words found in Alpha to argue that this notion is simply wrong and should never be entertained, I am going to keep my answer brief and let another answer for me.
The summer rains have arrived in my home area, thankfully. The rain, however, gives birth to the buzzing of a most annoying little insect – the mosquito. No matter a mosquito net, there will be one that invades my safety; it zooms around my ears throughout the night.
I leave it to this lone pesky mosquito to illustrate that one person can make a difference, no matter the circumstances.
Refer to the attached infographic. (Yes, it is meant to be too small to read! Click or keep scrolling. *)
While influential leaders cannot be bloodsuckers, they must have the same indomitable spirit as a pesky mosquito. Also, we know that leadership is not a solo enterprise, so referring to the individual who changes things for the better does not undermine the reality that it is always with others. However, it is the influential leader who goes first and who takes others along.
Underlying our influential leadership is a deep sense of personal agency — that we have the capability to think, choose and act, no matter our circumstances. Yes, circumstances can make it easier or difficult, and they do affect the leverage (scale) we have to shape and influence outcomes, but they do not define our agency.
So, whatever our circumstances, whatever we do with our lives — a homemaker, a student, a teacher, a businessperson, the executive or the apprentice, on the sports field — we do have social agency to lead. This is the first leadership moment we face — taking personal responsibility to lead.
It is not the power of the position that counts, but the power of our leadership!
Today is the day.
Regards,
Colin Donian
Shaping lives for the better
* ‘If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.’
Attributed to the Dalai Lama, but its origins perhaps elsewhere.
