Everyday leadership: ordinary people, extraordinary impact

Everyday leadership: when an ordinary person has an extraordinary impact on other people’s lives

Would you call yourself a leader? Drew Dudley argues that we’ve put leadership on a pedestal, so we rarely recognize the real leaders in our everyday lives. What’s more, those leaders often reject the title themselves, because most people associate leadership with changing the world, not with everyday acts that touch a single person.

An everyday leader isn’t someone who has transformed society or swayed a large community. It’s an ordinary person who has had an extraordinary impact on someone else’s life. I’m sure you’ve had moments like this: you met someone whose words or actions changed your life for the better. That person is an everyday leader. And you may well be one yourself, because most of the time we have no idea we’ve made a powerful difference in someone’s life.

Mattering to other people is powerful, even “scary,” as Dudley puts it in his TED talk. In his words: “We need to get over our fear of how powerful we can be in each other’s lives. We need to get past it so we can move forward, so that our little brothers and sisters, and our children (now or in the future), can see it and start to value the impact we can have on each other’s lives more than money and power, more than titles and influence.”

Redefining leadership as changing the life of even one person is a big deal. It empowers the everyday leader, and it reminds us how important it is to thank the people who care: the ones with the extraordinary power to change lives through their attitude, wisdom, example or simply who they are.

Want to learn more about everyday leadership? Watch Drew Dudley’s great TED talk: