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this. American workers were asked to select the one trait that was most important to them in a leader. While important to some, the majority of responders didn’t identify expertise, competence, or even fairness as most important. Here are the results of the survey:
RANK
CHARACTERISTIC
PERCENTAGE
1
Leading by Example
26%
2
Strong Ethics or Morals
19%
3
Knowledge of the Business
17%
4
Fairness
14%
5
Overall Intelligence and Competence
13%
6
Recognition of Employees
10% 2
    Clearly, if leaders have a strong set of ethical values and live them out, then people will respect them, not just their position.
    Immature leaders try to use their position to drive high performance. Mature leaders with self-knowledge realize that consistently high performance from their people isn’t prompted by position, power, or rules. It is encouraged by values that are real and genuine.
What Leadership Practices Do I Want to Put into Place?
    Herb Kelleher, the former chairman and CEO of Southwest Airlines, began his career as an attorney. In those early years, he learned some important lessons about leadership. He says:
    My best lesson on leadership came during my early days as a trial lawyer. Wanting to learn from the best, I went to see two of the most renowned litigators in San Antonio try cases. One sat there and never objected to anything, but was very gentle with witnesses and established a rapport with the jury. The other was an aggressive, thundering hell-raiser. And both seemed to win every case. That’s when I realized there are many different paths, not one right path. That’s true of leadership as well. People with different personalities, different approaches, different values succeed not because one set of values or practices is superior, but because their values and practices are
genuine
.
    If you want to become a better leader, you must not only know yourself and define your values. You must also live them out.
    As you think about the way you will define your leadership, take into consideration what kinds of habits and systems you will consistently practice. What will you do to organize yourself? What will you do every day when you arrive at work? What spiritual practices will you maintain to keep yourself on track? How will you treat people? What will be your work ethic? What kind of example will you set?Everything is up for grabs. It’s up to you to define it. And the earlier you are on the leadership journey, the greater the potential for gain if you start developing good habits now. 3
    The bottom line is that an invitation to lead people is an invitation to make a difference. Good leadership changes individual lives. It forms teams. It builds organizations. It impacts communities. It has the potential to impact the world. But never forget that position is only the starting point.

The Downside of Position
True Leadership Isn’t about Position
    L ike everything else in life, the Position level of leadership has negatives as well as positives. Each of the levels of leadership possesses downsides as well as upsides. You will find as you move up the levels that the upsides increase and the downsides decrease. Since Position is the lowest level of leadership, it has a great number of negatives. On Level 1, I see eight major downsides:
1. Having a Leadership Position Is Often Misleading
    The easiest way to define leadership is by position. Once you have a position or title, people will identify you with it. However, positions and titles are very misleading. A position always promises more than it can deliver.
    I learned this lesson about Level 1 when I received my first leadership position in my first church. I mistakenly thought that being named the pastor meant that I was the leader. I couldn’t have been more mistaken, as I found out in my first board meeting. Soon after I officially started the meeting as the designated leader, the
real
leader took over. His name was Claude. He had lived in the rural valley where the church was