People Who Lead and People Who Don’t.
I don’t remember where I first read or heard this idea, but over the years it has become increasingly black and white for me: some people lead, and some people don’t. Some people are leaders, and some simply aren’t.
Of course, you can debate titles, hierarchy, personality, leadership styles and a hundred other things around it. But after enough years in enough companies, you start to recognise something very quickly.
There are people who walk into a meeting and you immediately feel that they know why they are there. Sometimes you don’t even need the meeting. You can step into a lift with them and within a minute you sense it. They know what they want, what needs to happen, why it matters and roughly how they want to get there. This does not mean they have to be loud, aggressive or dominant. Some of the strongest leaders I have met were calm, kind and very soft-spoken. But the direction was still there. You could feel it.
And then there are people in leadership positions where you simply don’t get that feeling. They seem unsure why they are in the room, what decision needs to be made or what should happen next. Sometimes, after the meeting, you understand the situation even less than before.
The more interesting case is the opposite one: people who have no formal leadership position at all, but somehow lead anyway. They do not wait for authority. They do not wait for someone to walk over and explain exactly what needs to be done. They understand the situation, see what is missing and start moving things forward.
I think project and programme managers, in particular, need a lot of this. Most of the time, we are expected to make things happen without actually owning the people, functions or organisations involved. Formal authority is limited, sometimes almost nonexistent. Yet somebody still has to create direction, connect the dots, challenge people, make decisions happen and keep things moving.
Years ago, a very kind colleague of mine, Matthew, noticed this struggle in me. I had the energy to push something forward, but at the same time I was hesitating because, technically, nobody had given me the authority to do it.
He said something very simple: “Gergely, just keep doing it until somebody tells you to stop.” That’s it! No leadership model or framework or complicated discussion about empowerment, etc. Just a very human and emphatic way of saying: go ahead. If you go too far, somebody will tell you, if you are doing something that is not needed, somebody will tell you that too.
The interesting part? So far, nobody has ever told me to stop.
