To Become a Leader, Act Like One
Don’t wait for a promotion to change your mindset and behavior
Soon after I got the very first promotion of my career, I noticed something odd. I felt different. I was acting differently, too — in my interactions with my peers, the way I allocated my time, how I tackled projects. With a more senior title, I realized, I’d subconsciously started acting how I believed a more senior person should act.
I liked the change in myself. At the same time, though, it was also frustrating to realize how much influence my job title had held over my behavior. If I’d just acted this way to begin with, I remember thinking, I could have gotten that promotion much faster. I also didn’t love that I had let external feedback control my internal image of who I was. I had waited for the external validation of being promoted to determine who I was as a leader rather than relying on my internal self-image.
Every chance I could, I used my internal dialogue to remind myself I was a senior leader.
So I decided that going forward, I would pretend. Since my promotion had helped me to act the way I wanted to, I would force the same effect by mentally adding one level to my job title at all times. In other words, as long as I was a “Level 2”…
