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

8How to See the Best in People When They Give You Their Worst

Effective leadership is dealing with people who don't want to be followers.

One thing any leader must understand is that just because someone isn't a leader in the organization doesn't mean they aren't a leader at home or in their community. You have to give that person their due respect.

But even if you do everything right, there are people who don't want to get along, acting like problem children. Indeed, that might be more true than you realize; you may feel young, but compared to a nineteen‐ or twenty‐year‐old intern, you may as well be a geezer. Plus, that intern may be there for college credit, and you can't really fire them. Even if you did have the authority to fire them, you might not want to.

On the other hand, you can have a problem employee who's way older than you who believes they should've been appointed to your position. Thus there is immense envy, and they'll try to sabotage you.

In the face of this, you'll want to punish them, but you might want to be careful there.

The Pitfalls of Punishment

One thing you can do is punish the person or people causing all these problems—fight fire with fire, as the saying goes. But that doesn't work because they have the power to walk away. Where you exercise the soft power of being tough, they exercise the hard power of leaving, and if they were fulfilling crucial roles, you're stuck in a bad position. It can even look bad on your resume because you're not good ...