So, you want to be a leader? It's not as easy as it sounds but it is simple if you take the suggestions outlined here that I'm going to give you.

Many people believe that tenure at a job or in a position automatically qualifies them to be a leader. There are even some companies who practice that. I think that could be disastrous. On the other hand, if the candidate does an excellent job in the position and they have demonstrated leadership qualities, by all means they may be a good leader. But time in a position is not the only qualification.

What I've seen proved again and again in terms of sales and management is that the best salesperson does not necessarily make the best leader. I know some phenomenal sales people who would make terrible managers, and they've told me so! Sure they are skilled in the technical aspects of sales and are excellent at what they do, but that doesn't mean that they have what it takes to be a leader. Leadership is much more than knowing what to do on a job or how it works. I don't want to focus on that for this specific article because there's a very important step that comes before leading others that many experts don't talk about and that's leading yourself.

I'm going to tackle 3 areas of this subject that I think are crucial to your development and success. They are:

--Accepting responsibility for where you are in your life
--Taking responsibility for where you are going
--Gathering the help you need

--Accepting responsibility for where you are in your life
This may be the toughest step for you in leading yourself but if you do it, I promise you that the rest of the journey will be easy. Here's where you look at your life and acknowledge where you are and why you are where you are. It's where you stand in front of the mirror and say hello to your biggest problem and the cause of all your life's anxiety and strife: You. Accepting responsibility for where you are brings you to the realization that you are in charge of your life and everything that has happened to you up to this point. It's where you realize it's either all your fault or an Act of God. By Act of God I mean a natural disaster or the death of a loved one. Those are about the only 2 things that you have no control over. And if I had more time with you I might be able to develop a good argument that we can control those as well.

You might be saying, "C'mon Rich. You know I lost my job because my boss didn't like me or because I wasn't able to reach my quotas. He gave all the good accounts away! Then the market tanked! That had nothing to do with me. He fired me because he hated me." Well, you'd better sit down before you read my response to that. Here it is: You can look at every "bad" situation in your life and run it over and over in your mind and, if you really try, you can find at least one thing (probably many things) that you could have done better. And it may have been that one thing that would have changed the outcome of that situation.

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