“Viewing a leader as nothing more than a teacher changed everything,” my friend Mike writes in his book Shy by Design. As an introvert with a stutter, Mike always shuddered at the idea of leading. But teaching? Leveling with people to help them solve their problems? That he found exciting.
Nowadays, when he’s teaching classes at a university in Barcelona, Mike doesn’t start the year with a syllabus. He starts by asking questions. If you meet everyone where they are by involving them as early as designing the curriculum, you’ve already shown you care about them before the first lecture even begins.
Mike calls this approach “leading from behind.” Sure, a bold person with a big vision and a long sword, pointing the way, can be a leader—but they’re not the only kind. “Leaders come in various shapes and sizes,” Mike explains. “There is no one-size-fits-all approach to leadership, and no single type of leader is inherently superior to another.”
The folks who lead from behind “identify where their people want to go and they take on a more supportive role.” In developing the syllabus with his students, Mike offers them a chance to share their own ideas and opinions. He can re-explain points they struggle to understand. A dialogue is “more motivating and empowering than being told what they should think and what they should do,” and so leading from behind can be just as good, if not better, than charging ahead at the front of the army.
Leading is more than yelling and running. It can take as many shapes as water put into any vessel. If you don’t feel like standing in the spotlight, try leading from behind.