PDF Summary:How to Lead When You're Not in Charge, by Clay Scroggins

Do you ever find yourself thinking, “If I was in charge, I’d do things differently”? Do you have great ideas but feel like you’re not high enough on the career ladder to act on them? In How to Lead When You’re Not In Charge, business speaker and former evangelical pastor Clay Scroggins explains that you can be a leader even without holding a position of authority. Leadership is the ability to inspire others to strive toward a shared goal of a better future, and you can cultivate that ability regardless of your position in an organization’s hierarchy.

In this guide, we’ll first explore the servant nature of leadership, its biblical roots, and the risks of confusing authority with leadership. Then, we’ll discuss Scroggins’s advice for embracing leadership. In our commentary, we’ll supplement Scroggins’s ideas with those of other leadership experts like Ronald A. Heifetz (The Practice of Adaptive Leadership) and John C. Maxwell (The 5 Levels of Leadership). We’ll also look at the psychology behind his ideas.

(continued)...

While Scroggins includes how you want to be perceived as a guiding principle of personal development, these experts imply that you should only pay attention to others’ perception of you when it helps you reach your development goals. For instance, let’s say part of your development is setting better boundaries around accepting extra tasks at work. This lets you focus all your energy on being a great leader when completing your existing tasks. However, if your coworkers or subordinates are used to you helping everyone with their tasks on top of your own, they may be annoyed when you stop doing so, and they may temporarily perceive you as unhelpful. You must ignore this perception to stay focused on your development goals.

Leading Your Perception

The next type of self-leadership is “leading your perception,” or taking an active role in shaping how you think about things. This is an important axis of leadership because your perception of a situation influences how you react to it. (Shortform note: In The Power of Positive Thinking, Norman Vincent Peale says your perception doesn’t only influence how you react to situations, but also the situations themselves: You perceive a situation, react to it according to that perception, and then your reaction shapes subsequent experiences. Since leading your perceptions can affect the future as well as the present, it’s arguably even more important as an axis of leadership.)

Scroggins discusses two main ways you can lead your perception: taking a big-picture view and practicing critical thinking.

Take a Big-Picture View

One way you can lead your perception is by taking a big-picture view of it, Scroggins says. Instead of assuming that your perspective is automatically correct, recognize and see past your biases. This helps you understand your role and how it fits into both your organization and God’s overarching plan for your life.

(Shortform note: In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey refers to your perceptions as your “paradigms,” the lenses you see the world through that influence your perspective and behavior. It’s difficult to recognize and overcome the biases in your paradigms because you’re so used to them, he explains. In fact, people seldom realize their paradigms exist in the first place. Covey doesn’t say that changing your paradigms can help you understand your place in the world or God’s plan, but he does say it can help you change your behavior and, in the long term, your life for the better.)

Scroggins says taking a big-picture view can help you see situations positively, as opportunities for personal growth, instead of seeing them negatively. He implies that this positive perception makes it easier to support your superiors and display a strong moral character, thus encouraging people to see you as a leader, as discussed above.

(Shortform note: The benefits of taking a big-picture view echo the benefits of having an optimistic explanatory style, as discussed above. People with optimistic explanatory styles see negative experiences as situations they can influence and therefore grow through. They often have much higher quality of life and are happier than people with pessimistic styles. This increased happiness from taking a big-picture view could encourage people to see you as a leader. People who are happy at work are more helpful and cooperative, says Gretchen Rubin in The Happiness Project. They’re also less argumentative and vengeful. These qualities could make it easier to support your superiors, as well as being elements of a strong moral character.)

To take this kind of big-picture view, Scroggins says you need faith and hope. Faith is the belief that you’re exactly where God wants you to be right now. Hope is a firm conviction that God has good things planned for you. Together, they help you believe that your current position can prepare you for something better in the future.

(Shortform note: Faith and hope are two of the three theological virtues, with charity being the third. The Catholic Church defines charity as the love of God and neighbor—this is the biblical love we discussed in the last section, where you put the needs of others above your own. Charity inspires you to practice all other virtues, including faith and hope. It also helps you care for other people and be open-minded instead of insisting on your own way. Thus, you may need charity, as well as faith and hope, to step out of your perspective and take a big-picture view.)

Practice Critical Thinking

Another way you can lead your perception is by practicing critical thinking. Critical thinking helps you identify ways to improve the situations and organizations you’re involved in. Scroggins specifies that critical thinking and being critical are different: When you think critically, your goal is to serve and help others by creating positive change. In contrast, being critical usually involves judging and degrading others to elevate yourself. Jesus’ example shows the importance of doing the former rather than the latter: Instead of simply passing judgment on people, he offered them help and guidance.

(Shortform note: Scroggins discusses critical thinking in the context of your behavior toward other people, but his ideas could apply to your behavior toward yourself, too. Critical thinking is comparable to constructive criticism, which some psychologists describe as a style of self-talk where you identify and learn from your mistakes, thus improving your behavior. This contrasts with self-criticism, where you judge and degrade yourself. Some people mistake self-criticism for constructive criticism, believing that judging themselves will help them improve when it actually damages their mental health. Psychologists recommend treating yourself with gentleness and empathy, instead—in other words, treating yourself the way Jesus would treat you.)

According to Scroggins, critical thinking involves constantly observing your surroundings and asking questions about the things you observe. This includes the physical environment, the people around you, and the processes you all use. Asking questions like “Why do we use this specific process?” or “How could I make this better?” challenges your assumptions and can help you identify a better way of doing things. For example, you might ask why your office maintains a waiting area when you don’t offer in-person services. The answer might simply be that most offices have waiting areas, so your organization put one in too. After challenging this assumption, your organization could use that space for something more important.

(Shortform note: In First Things First, Stephen R. Covey agrees that you should analyze your surroundings. Asking questions about yourself, your coworkers, and your processes helps you feel empowered and empower others—an important part of leadership. Ask yourself, are you and your coworkers trustworthy and enthusiastic? Do your processes support the company’s goal? If not, you could ask why that is and how you can improve it. Covey doesn’t discuss the physical environment, but Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point) says you should evaluate it, too, as it conveys messages that affect your behavior. For instance, a dirty office suggests your work isn’t worth the effort to clean, which can reduce the overall effort you’re willing to expend.)

To encourage this observation and evaluation, schedule time for critical thinking throughout your work day, Scroggins says. This gives you a period of time without distractions where you can process information and make decisions carefully, rather than simply reacting to ongoing events. He especially recommends scheduling time between meetings so you can fully process the information from the first meeting and enter the next one with a clear and focused mind.

(Shortform note: In Ego Is the Enemy, Ryan Holiday agrees that taking time to reflect and focus is essential to productively handling your responsibilities. He points out an additional threat to this kind of focus: ego-driven self-promotion. This happens when instead of focusing on ongoing events, you’re distracted by talking about your plans and bragging about your successes. Social media is an especially prevalent source of this self-promotion, he warns, as people talk incessantly about all their thoughts, activities, and interactions. So, you may want to avoid social media when doing things that require a lot of focus, such as making decisions or processing information from meetings.)

Leading Your Identity

Another kind of self-leadership is leading your identity. Scroggins defines identity as the core beliefs you hold about yourself. These beliefs are shaped by four main factors:

1. The people you’re surrounded by, both now and in the past
2. Your intrinsic qualities, such as your talents, physical traits, and emotional state
3. The values and beliefs that you consider most important
4. Your sense of purpose, or why you believe you’re alive

These beliefs shape your behavior in every aspect of your life, including how you act as a leader. If you have a strong, clear sense of identity, you’ll understand your own strengths and limitations, so you can confidently make decisions as a leader. In contrast, if you have a weak sense of identity, you may overemphasize your strengths or weaknesses. If you overemphasize your strengths, you’ll become arrogant and may hide your mistakes so people keep viewing you positively, increasing the severity of the problem and your stress. If you overemphasize your weaknesses, you’ll be crippled by self-doubt and be less likely to take advantage of leadership opportunities because you fear failure.

(Shortform note: Above, we discussed ego—a sense of superiority where you overemphasize your strengths—and how it distracts you from completing tasks in favor of talking about yourself. Holiday says you can also be distracted by thinking about yourself too much. He agrees with Scroggins that this arrogance makes you too focused on defending the image of your greatness instead of completing your tasks. However, Holiday says egotistical thinking can also make you fear failure and stop you from taking action (which Scroggins attributes to overemphasizing weaknesses). Since you exaggerate your own greatness, you hold yourself to exaggerated standards, too, and you’re afraid to act in case you can’t meet them.)

Another Perspective on Identity

In Awaken the Giant Within, Tony Robbins explains that the beliefs you hold about yourself shape your behavior because you subconsciously strive to act in ways that reinforce your identity. So, it’s important to develop a positive identity that pushes you to be the person you want to be.

Robbins says your identity develops subconsciously through your life experiences. While he agrees with Scroggins that the influence of people around you plays a large role in your identity, as well as “intrinsic” traits like your physical traits and emotions, their ideas of identity differ in some important ways. For instance, Robbins doesn’t include values or purpose in his discussion of things that shape your identity. Instead, he focuses on your behavior and other traits like your income, profession, and title.

For Robbins, having a strong sense of identity is not about understanding your strengths and limitations to improve your leadership skills. Instead, it’s about aligning your behavior and your identity to improve your life. If you act in ways that are contrary to your identity, he says, you’ll experience an identity crisis and begin to question your own sense of self. This can cause internal confusion and distress. However, if you understand and adjust your identity in a positive way, you’ll know how to act in a way that aligns with your identity, avoiding crises and increasing your overall happiness and well-being.

How to Lead Your Identity

While some elements of your identity are fixed—for instance, you can’t change the influence your family had on you as you grew up—you can control others. For instance, Scroggins says you should develop your sense of purpose throughout your life.

(Shortform note: Robbins says that your identity must continually change to reflect your evolving experiences and circumstances. Thus your identity as a whole is something you can—and should—develop throughout your life, not just a few aspects of it. In fact, Robbins says you can choose to define yourself based on the past, the present, or the future, which means you could potentially change how the “fixed” parts of your identity affect you, too. For instance, while you can’t change how your family treated you growing up, you can choose to focus on who you are now or who you want to be in the future instead of their past influence.)

We’ve arranged Scroggins’s advice for leading your identity into two steps:

1. Remember that God values and loves you for who you are, not what you’ve achieved. He knows all of your weaknesses, and he loves you anyway. When you accept that God's love is unconditional, you can be bold and hold true to your ideals, instead of seeking approval from others or fearing failure. This step must be completed first, as your identity must be solidly rooted in God if you’re going to have the confidence to successfully complete the next step.

(Shortform note: in Everybody, Always, Bob Goff also says that focusing on unconditional love is essential to leading your identity in positive ways—to becoming the person God created you to be, as he puts it. However, Goff moves past remembering that God loves you unconditionally and says you must love others unconditionally, too. Specifically, you must offer everyone unconditional love, even if it’s difficult or the other person has done terrible things. Similar to Scroggins, Goff says the knowledge of God’s unconditional love for you can help you be brave and have the confidence to offer that same love to everyone else without fearing rejection.)

2. Determine whether the influences in your life—especially the people you surround yourself with—support your identity or degrade it. Then, pay attention to the positive influences and either limit or remove negative influences. For example, a friend who encourages you to live according to your values supports your identity, so you should heed their advice. A friend who encourages you to violate your values degrades your identity, so you should pay less attention to their opinion or, in serious cases, remove them from your life.

(Shortform note: Robbins says it’s important to be selective about the people you surround yourself with because other people’s identities can actually affect how you perceive your own. Specifically, he says that you’ll probably consider yourself to have the same identity traits as your friends. For instance, if you think of your friend as adventurous, you probably consider yourself adventurous, too. This suggests that being around people with negative traits could change your perception of your identity—and thus your behavior—for the worse. In this case, it may be better to remove negative influences entirely, instead of trying to limit their effect.)

Embrace Leadership of Others

Now that we’ve covered how you can lead yourself, we’ll discuss external areas of control: how you can lead people and things outside of yourself. Scroggins implies you have a measure of control over people and things you directly interact with, even without authority. (Shortform note: In The 10X Rule, Grant Cardone says that, even if you can’t control a situation, you can control how you react to it. So, take responsibility for everything that happens in your life—even situations out of your control, like power outages—and work to succeed. This suggests that you can control external people and things by reacting to them in productive ways—that you can embrace leadership of others by embracing leadership of yourself.)

We’ve grouped Scroggins’s ideas into two main kinds of external leadership: leading your environment and leading your superiors.

Leading Your Environment

One kind of external leadership is leading your environment, which we’re defining as the elements of an organization that you interact with regularly. These elements can be intangible, like the processes you use in your role, or tangible, like the way an office is arranged.

Scroggins says you should constantly look for new ways to improve your environment. He presents a three-step method for taking this kind of initiative. (Shortform note: We’ve reordered these steps to boost clarity.)

1. Remain attentive to your boss’s priorities. Scroggins says this gives you a direction to take initiative in: Once you understand how your boss wants to direct the company, you can identify ways to change your environment that’ll support them in reaching their goals. (Shortform note: This could be especially difficult if your boss is indecisive about their goals. When dealing with an indecisive boss, ensure you understand their expectations by raising specific queries—for instance, what are the exact benchmarks they want to meet—and recording their responses, some business experts suggest. Also, regularly check in to review your boss’s expectations so you can pivot quickly if their goals change.)

2. Select a persistent issue and take full responsibility for addressing it. Knowing that you’ll be held responsible for the result will encourage you to take initiative and work hard to solve the issue. Your ground-level position is an advantage here, Scroggins says, as you have firsthand insight into what works and what doesn't since you interact with the elements of your environment regularly.

(Shortform note: In Extreme Ownership, Jocko Willink and Leif Babin say you shouldn’t just take full responsibility for addressing one issue that affects your job, but all of them, even if they’re not your fault. This helps your team—or, in our case, your environment—continually improve, as you find ways to prevent other people’s mistakes as well as your own. It can also improve collaboration across an organization’s hierarchy: To avoid problems stemming from a lack of information or misunderstandings, you’ll likely be more diligent about communicating with your boss to ensure they have all the ground-level information needed to make good decisions and ensure you understand their reasoning for the decisions they make.)

3. Create a plan to resolve the issue before mentioning it to your boss. This shows that you’re thinking ahead and can be trusted with responsibility. As discussed previously, this makes you more trustworthy and increases the chances of your boss giving you a position of authority. Thus, Scroggins recommends adding regular planning time to your schedule. Make sure you allocate enough time to be thorough: The better planned your idea is, the more likely your boss is to accept it.

(Shortform note: In The Leadership Challenge, James Kouzes and Barry Posner suggest that you should not only make a plan, but also test that plan through experimentation. People may be unwilling to accept an unproved plan, they explain. So, test your vision or strategy on a small scale before proposing your plan. This lets you refine your plan to be more effective and collect proof that it's viable. And if making a plan demonstrates forethought and proves your trustworthiness, going the extra mile to test that plan will arguably be even more effective. Depending on the kind of plan and its thoroughness, this testing process could have many steps, so factor that in when adding planning time to your schedule.)

Leading Your Superiors

Another kind of external leadership is leading your superiors, Scroggins says. Sometimes, you’ll notice areas that need change but are outside of your control. In these cases, you must leverage your boss’s authority to make those changes. You do this by communicating with them about the issues you’ve noticed and encouraging them to change those areas for the better.

(Shortform note: In The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, Ronald A. Heifetz calls this kind of influence over your superiors “informal authority”: the ability to hold your superiors accountable, even without hierarchical power. In our case, you hold your boss accountable for addressing the issues you’ve noticed. Informal authority is situation-dependent: You may have enough informal authority to suggest changes to a project you’re involved in, but not to unrelated issues. You can use your formal authority as a tool to increase your informal authority and leverage your boss’s formal authority, Heifetz adds. For example, if you’re in charge of tracking the project’s progress, you can highlight the issues you’ve noticed in your progress report to encourage your boss to address them.)

This is a delicate process, Scroggins emphasizes. Sharing your perspective with your boss in a thoughtful and constructive way can lead to improvement, but doing so ineffectively might harm your professional relationship and make it harder to create positive change. People tend to get defensive when confronted with ideas that upset the status quo. It provokes their fear of change, and they may perceive your request for change as an implied criticism of their past decisions that created the status quo.

Scroggins offers a few methods for overcoming this resistance to change:

1. Invest time in strengthening your relationship with your boss. As discussed previously, the more they trust you, the more likely they are to follow your suggestions. If your current relationship with your boss isn't strong, prioritize strengthening it before suggesting change. (Shortform note: Before suggesting change, you may also want to reflect on your past experiences with authority figures. Heifetz says your emotions regarding previous authority figures can affect your relationship with your current ones, and you must move past negative past experiences to develop a strong, helpful relationship with your boss.)

2. Be prepared to provide a compelling justification for why change is necessary. If your reasoning is uncertain or unclear, it may confuse others, and they might resist change even if your suggestions are valid. In contrast, a well-articulated argument increases the chances of your superior agreeing to your proposed changes.

(Shortform note: A clear, compelling justification may be necessary because of “status quo bias,” people’s tendency to maintain the status quo even if change would be better. Some psychologists say people fall back on the status quo when they’re overwhelmed with choices and have limited information. They choose to maintain the status quo because it’s less uncertain and thus seems safer. So, clearly explaining why change is necessary and your plan for creating it could reduce this overwhelm and give your boss enough information to make an educated decision, instead of a biased one.)

3. Maintain a calm, non-judgmental tone. Even the best ideas can be rejected if they're presented with an aggressive tone. Avoid placing blame or issuing ultimatums, Scroggins warns. This will make your boss feel under attack, increasing their defensiveness. Instead, stay non-judgmental and decide how to proceed with your boss. This creates a collaborative environment where you and your boss work together to create positive change.

Using Motivational Interviewing to Overcome Ambivalence

As well as fear and defensiveness, ambivalence may stop people from creating positive change. Some psychologists define ambivalence as feeling two ways about an issue simultaneously, resulting in a frozen, unprogressive state. For instance, your boss may feel both open to change and resistant to it. This internal stalemate means no change occurs.

Often, people try to break this stalemate by telling ambivalent individuals why they should change. Most psychologists say this is ineffective. Ambivalent individuals already know the arguments both for and against change—they’ve already had the argument with themselves. In fact, this method can make them more resistant to change: Since you’re taking one side of the argument (in favor of change), the ambivalent individuals automatically take the other.

Instead, the psychologists suggest motivational interviewing (MI), a method of communication where you help ambivalent individuals identify and express their own reasons for change. MI relies on collaboration, acceptance, and compassion: You respect others’ autonomy and want to work with them to improve their situations, instead of just pressuring them to change.

To practice MI, don’t judge or shame people, as Scroggins says. Instead, neutrally represent both sides of the argument and encourage ambivalent individuals to express their thoughts about both. This lets them evaluate their reasons for changing without feeling like they have to defend one side. Then, neutrally reflect their own reasoning back to them. This can help ambivalent individuals believe more strongly in their reasons for changing, overcoming the internal stalemate. For example, a conversation with your boss may look something like this:

You: I know you like how efficient our current process is. It lets us fill orders quickly, and it helped us grow the company. I’m curious, are there any reasons you’d want to change it?

Your boss: It’s efficient, but it also causes quality issues. I know those issues are hurting our reputation and losing us customers, but we’re barely keeping up with orders as it is.

You: You’re worried that changing this process will make us less productive, and you also realize that the current process is limiting the quality of our products and customer retention.

Your boss: Yes. Handling customer complaints is already wasting time we could use to fill orders. Maybe the current process is reducing our quality and productivity. It might be worth losing more productivity now to fix both problems in the long term.

You: That might increase our customer base in the future. It may also lose us customers now.

Your boss: We’re already losing customers. Something has to give. You said you have a plan for improving the process? Tell me about it.