Are you a leader? Some people answer that question with an unqualified yes. Some people wish they could be leaders, but assume leadership is for other people. Some people respond by wondering why they would ever want to be a leader, because their associations with leadership are so negative.

Leadership is for everyone. If you’re someone who is working on themselves, and you’re not leading in your life, there’s some important work for you to do. If you’re a counselor and your clients aren’t leading in their lives, there’s something missing from the work you’re doing together.

There are three notions about leadership I find to be particularly helpful in understanding this approach to leadership.

1. Leadership is an attitude: Rather than merely a role to play, leadership is a way of approaching everything you encounter.
2. Leadership is the natural outcome of reclaiming power: When you realize how much capacity you have to reshape the world, you can’t help but start to lead.
3. Leadership is a developmental stage: Becoming more yourself, and more a part of the world, includes entering the leadership stage of human development.

About the Author

Steve Bearman, Ph.D., earned his doctorate in Psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He founded Interchange Counseling Institute in 2002 and is the lead teacher of Interchange's San Francisco-based year-long counseling and coaching training. When he's not counseling people, leading workshops, and advocating for social justice, Steve climbs mountains, adventures in the urban wilderness, explores the edges and limits of what's possible, deconstructs everything, and finds new ways to put it all back together.