Roesler (2009) writes:
“Totally random people are placed in a group.
They are given a task.
Lo and behold, a leader will emerge.”
If you one of those people regardless of the position that you’re in, then you might be an emerging leader. Emerging leaders are usually defined in the context of business, but I believe that they can be found in every situation. The aunt who becomes the ‘MasterChef’ in family occasions, the child who gets other children to finish a Lego masterpiece, the friend who always manages to get everyone together to celebrates someone’s birthday. These are just some situations where people can emerge as leaders without a formal job title.
For me, emergent leadership is about showing up to positively influence a situation. It is about owning your greatness, and to show up self-aware, ready to serve, and take others along with you.
I wish that emerging as a leader always looked like that. Nope! Usually, if you lack positional power, it doesn’t seem like you have space to even have a voice in a room of directors, parents/elders, and those off-the-chart extroverts. But power is not only formal or positional. Emerging leaders can understand and use other forms of power, for example, expert power – Oprah can confidently speak at a graduation full of very intelligent people even though she is not a seasoned professor because she’s an expert communicator. Too far-fetched? Okay, how about this example of another type of power. Psychological power, did you know that someone who has overcome a particular difficulty – e.g oppression, is likely to have power over those who haven’t? So in a situation that requires that understanding, ‘the oppressed’ can emerge as leaders to help educate the room. And no, it might not look like the fabulous lady above, but look a little more shaky like so…
But as Brene Brown once shared on Twitter, perhaps leaders emerge even when their voices shake:
Finally, the more I am learning about leadership, the more I realize that it is quite a long-term journey of getting better at being a greater version of yourself. Emerging leaders understand that they haven’t arrived. They are always emerging and growing. They understand that leadership is an iterative process, a destination where you always aspire to, and never quite reach because perhaps the path of one’s greatness is infinite.
References
http://www.allthingsworkplace.com/2009/06/youve-seen-this-happen1-totally-random-people-are-placed-in-a-group2-they-are-given-a-task3-lo-and-behold-a-leader-wil.html