Learning To Be A Leader
How did you learn to lead? Was it a bad boss? A graduate program? Trial and error?
I love asking this question in workshops and coaching conversations. People often pause, realizing that being a leader has become so intrinsic to who they are that they’ve forgotten how they got there.
The answers are never the same, and they reveal so much about a workplace’s culture, team dynamics, and how relationships work behind the scenes. They also tend to carry emotion: pride, frustration, or a quiet sense of I wish I knew how to share what I know; maybe it could be easier for someone else.
Some people talk about a life-changing course or mentor. Others were thrown in the deep end and figured things out as they went. Many learned what not to do by working for someone whose leadership left a mark: painful at the time, clarifying in hindsight.
Many people receive no formal leadership training at all. They move up through subject matter expertise, seniority, or reliability, and suddenly find themselves responsible for people, decisions, and outcomes they were never explicitly prepared for.
LEARNING WITHOUT A MANUAL
Here are some of the most common answers I hear:
Formal education – A Master of Leadership, an MBA, or a certificate program. These can be incredibly useful for tools and frameworks, but they’re far from the only way leadership is learned.
Mentorship – Formal or informal, through work, volunteering, or community. Often it’s the person who sees your potential before you do. Access to mentorship, however, is rarely equal.
The “bad boss” effect – A difficult manager can teach you what not to do more vividly than any textbook. Many people quietly build their leadership philosophy in direct response to these experiences.
Coaching – My personal favourite to provide (and to receive). Coaching creates space to reflect, challenge assumptions, and build skills in real time. It’s not always accessible, but when it is, the impact can be powerful.
In-house professional development – Larger organizations often have learning budgets and sometimes dedicated staff to build or source programs.
Team training – One of my top picks, both to participate in and to deliver. Learning together builds shared language, distributes responsibility, and helps teams move forward collectively rather than relying on one person to “carry” leadership.
And of course, these aren’t the only ways people learn. Our ideas about what makes a good leader are influenced by our cultural lenses, history, and personal experiences.
LEADERSHIP MODELS WE INHERIT
In much of North America and Western Europe, leadership has been shaped by industrialization, capitalism, and individualism. These models often emphasize:
Hierarchy & positional authority – clear chains of command and formal titles
Performance & efficiency – results and productivity over process
The “hero” leader – visionary individuals rather than collective wisdom
These approaches can fuel growth, but they also risk overlooking the relational, long-term, and community-oriented aspects of leadership. Over time, they can create leaders who feel they must carry everything alone, teams that wait for permission instead of taking initiative, and workplaces that reward endurance over sustainability.
The burnout patterns I see aren’t personal failures. They’re predictable outcomes of leadership systems that prioritize output without equal attention to capacity, relationship, and long-term organizational health.
Leadership development itself often becomes invisible labour. It lives in people’s heads rather than in shared systems: tracking who’s ready for what, smoothing issues before they escalate, filling gaps others don’t yet see. When this work is undocumented and unsupported, it becomes unevenly distributed and exhausting.
In many parts of the world, leadership carries different assumptions. For example:
Ubuntu philosophy – “I am because we are,” highlighting interdependence and mutual care
Pacific Islander traditions – leadership rooted in service, kinship ties, and stewardship for future generations
Confucian-influenced approaches – valuing harmony, respect for elders, and moral responsibility
Here, leadership is often less about personal authority and more about the well-being of the whole.
Decolonial leadership invites us to question and dismantle models imposed through colonization – systems that concentrate power, extract resources, and disregard community autonomy.
Many Indigenous leadership traditions (while diverse and specific to each Nation) share some common threads:
Relational authority – trust and respect earned through service to the community
Consensus decision-making – dialogue and collective agreement
Intergenerational thinking – decisions made with future generations in mind
Reciprocity & stewardship – caretaking of people, land, water, and knowledge
Honouring these approaches requires more than borrowing ideas or language. It means shifting underlying power structures, centring Indigenous voices, and acknowledging both historical and ongoing colonial harm.
LEADERSHIP AS A LIVING PRACTICE
In my experience, the best leaders draw from a blend: formal learning, lived experience, mentorship, trial and error, and cultural traditions that shape how they show up. Many begin practising leadership long before they have the title, budget, or authority: noticing gaps, taking risks, and contributing without certainty or recognition.
Leadership is rarely learned in one place, or all at once. It’s stitched together by the people who influenced us, the mistakes we made, the successes we celebrated, and the communities we belong to.
How did you learn to lead? And how are you continuing to grow?
Want support that goes beyond the surface level? Book a call and let’s chat.