The ABCs of Leadership
Am I ready to be a leader? Most people who ask that question wait for a feeling of readiness that never arrives, so they stall. This article gives you a clearer test: the ABCs of leadership, three basics you can build on purpose, plus one small step you can take today.
At Keystep, our mission is simple. We help new and aspiring leaders lead themselves first, so they can lead others well. The ABCs are where that starts: A is Awareness, B is Belief, and C is Calling.
Readiness isn’t a feeling you wait for. It’s three basics you can build.
A is for Awareness: lead yourself first
Before you can lead others excellently, you have to lead yourself excellently. That starts with awareness: noticing what you’re thinking, feeling and doing while it’s happening.
Most of us do that less than we assume. Harvard researchers Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert sampled thousands of people through the day and found their minds wandered in about 47% of moments, and wandering minds were less happy. Tasha Eurich’s research found that about 95% of people believe they’re self-aware, but only 10 to 15% actually fit the criteria.
Lead yourself first. Awareness is where every other leadership skill starts.
Mastering your mind
Mindfulness is the bedrock. Meditation helps train it, but it isn’t the whole thing. Mastering your mind means choosing where your focus goes and acting on purpose instead of on autopilot, all day long.
Two simple habits help. The first is naming what you feel. In a brain-imaging study, Matthew Lieberman and colleagues found that putting a feeling into words reduced the response of the amygdala, a brain area tied to emotional reactions. Naming frustration gives you a moment to choose your response.
The second is deciding ahead of time. Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran reviewed 94 tests of “if-then” plans, like “If a meeting gets tense, then pause and ask a question.” These plans had a medium-to-large effect on reaching goals.
Name the feeling and plan the response, and your reactions become choices.
Choosing who you’ll be
Awareness also lets you choose your identity. Psychologist Daphna Oyserman’s research on identity-based motivation suggests that the way we see ourselves isn’t fixed. It shifts with context, and we lean toward actions that fit the identity on our mind. When something hard feels true to who we are, we read the difficulty as a sign it matters, not that it’s impossible.
So once you’re aware, you can decide to be someone who leads. Then you take the actions that fit, and you manage yourself so you can be at your best for the people counting on you.
Identity is a choice you make, then prove with action.
B is for Belief: trust what you can do
Belief isn’t having every answer. It’s trusting that you can figure things out and owning the outcome before you feel fully ready.
Awareness feeds it. When you honestly know your strengths, your belief rests on something real. When you know your gaps, they become things you’re working on instead of secrets. That’s a healthy, positive self-image: you know what you bring, and you know you can grow.
Awareness gives you a true picture of yourself. Belief in that picture lets you step up.
What the research says about self-efficacy
Psychologist Albert Bandura called this belief self-efficacy. He proposed that it shapes whether you start something hard, how much effort you put in, and how long you keep going through obstacles. That last part is resilience, and each setback you push through builds more belief.
Alexander Stajkovic and Fred Luthans combined 114 studies covering more than 21,000 people and found a clear positive link between self-efficacy and work performance.
Your brain responds too. In a 2016 study led by Christopher Cascio, people who reflected on their core values showed more activity in brain areas tied to self-related thinking and reward, including the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and that activity predicted later changes in behavior.
Belief is built by acting before you feel ready, then keeping going.
C is for Calling: feel the pull to serve
Calling is the capstone. Once you see yourself clearly and believe in yourself, there’s one more question: do you feel called to serve people, lead a cause, or make an impact beyond your own work?
Money and titles won’t carry you through a hard week. Caring whether people get better will. If you feel that pull, and you’ve worked on your A and B, you have the capacity to lead.
If the honest answer is “not yet,” or that you don’t want it, that’s a real result too. Deciding on purpose beats drifting into a role you don’t want.
Awareness plus Belief plus Calling: that’s the capacity to lead.
One key step a day
This is where the name Keystep comes from. We believe leadership is built through consistency: taking one key step every day. Start with the letter that feels weakest today:
- Awareness: write one if-then plan for a moment that usually trips you up.
- Belief: write down three things you do well, then own one task nobody has claimed.
- Calling: help a newer coworker with something they’re stuck on.
Know your ABCs and practice them daily, and you become a leader people trust.
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Sources
- Killingsworth, M. A. & Gilbert, D. T. (2010). Minds wandered in about 47% of sampled moments, and people were less happy when they did. “A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind,” Science 330(6006), 932. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1192439
- Eurich, T. (2018). About 95% of people think they’re self-aware; only 10 to 15% are. “What Self-Awareness Really Is (and How to Cultivate It),” Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2018/01/what-self-awareness-really-is-and-how-to-cultivate-it
- Lieberman, M. D., et al. (2007). Putting feelings into words reduced amygdala response. “Putting Feelings Into Words,” Psychological Science 18(5), 421-428. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01916.x
- Gollwitzer, P. M. & Sheeran, P. (2006). Across 94 tests, if-then plans had a medium-to-large effect on reaching goals. “Implementation Intentions and Goal Achievement,” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 38, 69-119. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(06)38002-1
- Oyserman, D. (2009). Identity shifts with context, and people lean toward actions that fit it. “Identity-based motivation,” Journal of Consumer Psychology 19(3), 250-260. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcps.2009.05.008
- Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy shapes whether people start, how hard they try and how long they persist. “Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change,” Psychological Review 84(2), 191-215. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.84.2.191
- Stajkovic, A. D. & Luthans, F. (1998). 114 studies with 21,616 people showed a clear positive link between self-efficacy and work performance. Psychological Bulletin 124(2), 240-261. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.124.2.240
- Cascio, C. N., et al. (2016). Reflecting on core values raised activity in self-related and reward areas, including the vmPFC, and predicted behavior change. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 11(4), 621-629. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsv136
- The ABCs framework is Keystep’s own, not a validated psychometric instrument.
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