Jennifer Davidson, Reality Check Coaching, based in Portland, Oregon, offers leadership for your career & life goals

Leadership as an epidemic may sound a bit odd, but if you consider the implications it is quite an amazing idea. What if everyone around you started behaving more like a leader? Confident individuals working in a collaborative way. It’s possible, and it starts with you.

If you are unhappy with your surroundings and the lack of leadership in your life change yourself first.  Once you start to embody the characteristics of a leader others will follow.  You might be thinking, “Ya, right lady” or hopefully, ”Ya, but how?” Here are the 5 key steps to becoming more of a leader:

1. Give Yourself a Reality Check - How do you show up as a leader each day? Are you on time, prepared for meetings, and full of confidence? Really take a look at your behavior, what you contribute, and how you show up in life. Ask yourself what you would expect of a great leader. Write it down, read it over, and expect those same qualities of yourself.
2. Fake It ‘Til You Make It - It’s not easy to be a leader all of the time. Give yourself some practice and time to evolve. If you can fake it, it will get easier and easier to truly make it as a leader.
3. Consistently Show Up - Show up as a leader in all areas of your life. Balance is essential! So, don’t just show up as a leader to work, or in front of the kids. Show up as a leader in everything you do. True leaders carry themselves with strength, power, and consistency.
4. Dream Big - Leaders don’t have small ideas they have BIG ideas! Now, this isn’t big in the “does size really matter” kind of way. This is big as in “limitless possibilities”. If you have an idea, share it! Tell others when you have an alternative way of attacking a problem or you have a new idea. Even if your big dream isn’t used you will still be seen as someone who contributes.
5. Believe It - Once you believe it (you are a leader) others will too. We know this is true because we’ve seen it in the leaders we admire. Believing it is the fuel to keep your leadership engine running for years to come!

Once you have gone through the 5 key steps to becoming a leader others will start to follow. Malcolm Gladwell stated in The Tipping Point, “What must underlie successful epidemics, in the end, is a bedrock belief that change is possible, that people can radically transform their behavior or beliefs in the face of the right kind of impetus…We are actually powerfully influenced by our surroundings, our immediate context, and the personalities of those around us.”

Be the leader of change and believe that you have the power to make it real!