Week 5 Post 1: From a Follower to a Leader

I am interested in how to improve my skills as a leader, so I read an article on Entrepenuer.com called, “4 Ways a Follower Can Become a Leader”. I liked this article because it explains how you can transform yourself from a follower into a leader. The article starts off by explaining some good characteristics of a successful leader. The author lists qualities such as confidence, decisiveness, respect, communication, and commitment. Which I agree are all important traits to have as a leader. What I liked was that the author mentions how all of the listed attributes are ones that can be developed by any person with the right amount of motivation. The author then goes on to explain four different ways to go about attaining leadership. The four ways are, experience, incremental growth, sheer will, and necessity. Experience is one of the most important and valuable ways to attain leadership in my opinion. The more time you spend on whatever you want to become a leader in, allows you to gain more of an understanding of it each day. You will eventually gain the knowledge, communication, and confidence it takes to be a good leader in the specified area. I also think incremental growth is a good way to look at attaining leadership. It shows that you don’t have to go from being a follower to a leader overnight (even though I wish it was that easy). The author states that if you start seeking intermediary “leadership” roles and inch your way up the ladder, you will start feeling more comfortable in your leadership abilities. I never really thought of sheer will or necessity as ways to attain leadership, however I find it interesting how the author described the two methods. For sheer will the author explains, “Of course, it’s also possible to develop your abilities as a leader through sheer force of will, strange as it may sound. If you spend some time introspecting and evaluating what it takes to be a leader in your industry, you can make a list of all the abilities, skills, or points of knowledge you need to acquire, and slowly work to acquire them. This method takes significant time, energy, and will, but it can lead you in the right direction for development”. I agree that this is definitely a way you could become a leader but I do not think it would be an effective or successful approach. As for necessity the author says, “Sometimes, the best way to learn how to swim is to be thrown into the water. As leadership abilities reliably develop with experience, in some cases the best thing to do is to adopt a leadership role—such as starting your own business—regardless of how “ready” you are. You’ll sink or swim by necessity, and the pressure of the situation will help you develop your necessary skills faster. It’s a scarier method to become a leader, but a faster one”. I found this method interesting based on the fact that the author believes the pressure being put into a situation that you don’t have much experience in will ultimately help you develop the needed skills. I think the method could definitely work but I also think it could result in failure.