Leadership is a Choice

In senior year of high school I gave the “Leadership” talk at a retreat.

I’d been in student leadership positions since 8th grade when I was class president. That part of myself continued into high school, where I was a leader in different student groups, athletic teams, and for the school. I didn’t know much about what leadership actually was back then, I just knew I could do it. All it took was getting over the hump of being uncomfortable being the first to stand up, then having the courage to do what I said I would do. Not too complicated.

When researching for the talk, I came across this TED Talk from Simon Sinek where he said that leadership is a choice. That made sense to me. People fall into positions of authority, but nobody falls into leadership. To be a leader is to choose to do your best for the people you serve. It’s about building trust by being a good person, then helping others get what they want. That’s what I focussed the talk around–the idea that we can all be leaders if we want to. All leaders do is choose to make people’s lives better.

Fast forward through more student leadership roles in college and a Master’s Degree in Organizational Leadership where I studied leadership theory & practice for two years. I learned a lot, and my education became alive as I worked as a teacher at the same time. But nothing I learned was more important than that Simon Sinek talk. Leadership is a choice, and it’s all about trust. I now understand more about the why of leadership, but the that remains the same. To be a leader is to choose to be better for others.

Leadership is a choice.

TRUST Model

Last semester in my leadership class, my group and I developed the TRUST Model for our Leadership project. The intention was simple: every topic we covered throughout the course dealt with interpersonal relationships, but none of them addressed how to build the most important part of any relationship, that is, trust. So this model helps people to first become a trustworthy individual and then move into trusting relationships with others.

Here’s how the TRUST acronym works:

  • Talented
  • Reliable
  • Unifying Mission
  • Supportive
  • Transparent

Imagine there are two magnifying glasses hovering over the word TRUST. The first magnifying glass includes the first 3 letters which stand for Talented, Reliable, and Unifying Mission. This is the Personal Lens. The second magnifying glass includes the last 3 letters which stand for Unifying Mission, Supportive, and Transparent. This is the Interpersonal Lens.

So to become a trustworthy person, it would help to become talented at the specific task you’re focusing on and reliable showing up each day with the same vigor and effectiveness. Next, it’s time to move into relationships with others. To get other people to place their trust in you, being supportive of them and honest are musts. To tie everything altogether, it’s important to always consider the Mission, the cause greater than yourself, that unites you and your teammate together.

This is how to become a Trustworthy person that can enter into trusting relationships with others.