Remember, we call someone leader not because they’re in charge but because they went
first.
First into the unknown, first towards the danger, first to protect the people.
Because everybody just stands there and says, “What are we gonna do?”
It’s the leader who says, “I got it.
I got your backs.”
That’s why we call you leader.
I know many people who sit at the highest levels of organizations who aren’t leaders.
They have authority.
We do as they tell us because they have authority over us, but we wouldn’t follow them, we
wouldn’t work to keep them safe and advance their vision.
And I know many people who sit at the lowest levels of organizations that have no authority
but absolutely are leaders because they’ve made the choice to look after the person to
the left of them and to take care of the person to the right of them.
That is what it means to be a leader.
Having a position of authority simply means that you get to operate at greater scale and
influence more people, but a leader can never feel safe until the people feel safe first.
That’s the responsibility of the leader, to start, to go first.