Imagine you are watching the start of a race. The runners are at the starting blocks. Their feet are set and their fingers spread just behind the white line in their lane. The starter raises his hand and says these words:

On your mark. Get set. Go!

Imagine that all the runners take off…except for one. This runner remains in the blocks. In his mind, he is envisioning himself in the race — legs striding out, arms pumping, racing neck and neck with the other racers. But this is only occurring in his mind. His body is still in the blocks.

I know, it’s a silly scenario. But I see this all the time when a person has an opportunity to get involved, take care of a need, solve a problem, or fill a leadership position — and he or she just sits in the starting blocks. Continue Reading…

I recently posted a comment to an online discussion. The question was, When did you first realize you were a leader?

In my response, I stated that my first leadership role was eraser monitor. “The job of the eraser monitor was to take the erasers from the chalkboard (do we still use chalkboards?) outside and bang them together to get the chalk off them. The monitor always returned to the room a bit pale.”

As a child, and well into adolescence, I viewed leadership as a role or position that someone filled. You were a leader if you had the title, the t-shirt, and the nametag. If you didn’t have a position, you weren’t the leader.

The Impact Graph (click on image to see full size)

This brings us back to the Impact Graph. There are two measurements in the graph. One distinguishes between leaders and followers, the other between impact and no impact. In the last post, I describe those who fall into the follower-no impact category as “spectators.” In this post, I want to address the leader-no impact category. A group of people I like to call “figureheads.”

Continue Reading…