How to Be a Good Leader When You've Never had One

5Identifying Your Core Leadership Strengths

Leadership is not a one‐size‐fits‐all endeavor; it is as unique as the individuals who lead. That said, you may have heard the expression that history does not repeat but it rhymes. Good leadership is like that. There are essential skills to leading well, which we'll cover in subsequent chapters. But leadership is inclusive of all that you, the leader or would‐be leader, are. You don't have to stop being yourself. In fact, we want you to be more of who you are.

Great‐yet‐not‐so‐good leaders have an air of inauthenticity about them, as if they are trying to portray that perfect Hollywoodesque image of the type of leader they are—a manager, a vice president, or even a “big shot” with great power and great responsibility. There's no need for that. What there is need for, however, is a mirror.

I wrote earlier that those most business‐savvy struggle with leadership because they are so capable at doing the things they are supposed to be, as leaders, supervising others in doing. The book The E‐Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber spends a couple hundred pages acknowledging this trap. When a specialist, technician, or otherwise worker bee starts a company—and therefore becomes its leader—they struggle to integrate their technical skill and natural aptitude into that leadership role. It's awful, actually. They “work in the business, not on the business.” And the result is the company is headless. There is a leader who isn't leading; they're doing ...