My Reflection on Leadership without Authority
As part of the project work assigned to us by Amal Academy, I have been asked to reflect on my leadership potential. I have always believed that a leader is someone who has the authority to give instructions, who can bring a massive change around them, who manages their team, or someone who inspires people to follow them.
During the past week, I have learned and acknowledged a new meaning of leadership; which sheds light more on responsibility and less on authority. To be a leader, you don’t have to hold authority over other people or things, you just have to take responsibility and an initiative. You can practice leadership without anyone’s permission and eventually be good at it. Taking small or big steps towards you goals, taking responsibility of completing a task for your team or uplift the morale of your team, taking an initiative to learn a skill and committing to it, even stepping up to clean the mess that you have made in the bedroom or anywhere, are all acts of leadership.
Now, here comes the reflection on my leadership act. I was sitting in my room and l looked around me to find something that needed to be fixed to complete the activity, and while there were multiple things to do like doing my laundry or cleaning up the drawers, I decided to sort out my clothes in my cupboard. I realized that I have not been keeping my clothes in order and was just dumping everything in the cupboard which made a mess and became a hindrance in keeping track of my clothes and deciding what to wear to university everyday.
So, I opened my cupboard and started organizing. I started with separating my new dresses, my old ones, jeans, kurtis, trousers, winter clothes, folded those that needed to be folded and hanged those that needed to be hanged, made sections and put every piece of clothing in the section where they belonged and voila! I had an organized, sorted cupboard and it became really easy to keep track of all my clothes.
If I had not been asked to do this activity, I would have put it off for a couple of days because there’s always so much else on my mind that I keep forgetting to do it or simply procrastinate. Doing this activity made me realize how proud I was of myself and how it gave me a small sense of achievement and confidence that if I can do this then maybe, I can do other things as well. Apparently, this is a very small act but it is an example of practicing leadership in your everyday life without given authority. Nobody gave me the permission to do anything, I took the charge of making my life comfortable (even if in a minute way), I took the responsibility, took an initiative and just completed it which consequently, motivated me to perform (Amal) other tasks as well and helped my confidence level.
A quote about everyday leadership and leading without authority that I really like, goes like this:
“Leadership is action, not position” — Donald McGannon
