How Can I Have More Leadership?

I was asked, "How Can I Have More Leadership?"

Many people were interested in my answer, even though I'm not sure whether this question means

How can I have more leadership applied to me?

or 

How can I provide more leadership for others?

In some ways, it's the same question either way. Why? Because if you want more leadership applied to you, the primary way to get it is to provide it yourself.

There are many things you could do to provide more leadership, but I would suggest that before you do any of them, set your mind firmly on this definition of leadership:

“Leadership is the ability to enhance the environment so that everybody is empowered to contribute creatively to the task.”

Don’t forget any of the key words. Check them out when you’re about to do something you think of as “leading.”

• enhance: you’re making the environment better in some way, and there's lots of way to do that, not one single "leader" way

• for everybody involved, so make sure what you think is an enhancement is really that for everybody

• so they’re empowered, which doesn’t mean forced or ordered, especially not by you

• creatively, not in some stupid or mindless way, and not necessarily in the way you would do it

• and stay on task, for your job is not to fix everyone else, but to help the job at hand get done

If you keep these things in mind, you won’t always be perfect at leading, but with practice you’ll get better and better, with fewer blunders.

See. Becoming a Technical Leader