Beat Your Path As You Walk It

I was invited to speak this afternoon at a meeting of about 65 Wake County Schools assistant principals. This was the first of many planned meetings for this group. Here is the interesting part: No one in central services told them they had to organize. No one in central services told them they had to come. They just did.

Ironically, the very topic I chose to share--creating your own leadership development through training, facilitating, coaching, and consulting,--was manifest in the self-organized convening of this group. So as I was talking with them about what a poet called "beating your path as you walk it," they were doing just that. Talk about preaching to the choir!

Every reader of this blog is a leader. How you got to where you are is as unique as your own personality. I'll wager, however, that each of you have this much in common: at some point in your life, you took  responsibility for your own development and what those and the situation around you needed for you to be.

Leadership opportunities abound because, in my mind, to practice leadership is simply to do something that needs to be done by enlisting others in the effort. I would love to hear how you beat your path to leadership. What called you to lead? Who were your influences? What has the journey been like so far?