It’s guest post Monday! This post is written by Jeremy C. Jones who is a Military veteran who served during Operation Enduring Freedom. He writes a High-Tech/High-Touch Marketing blog AskJeremyJones.com and is the founder of 180xCoaching.com. You can connect with him on Twitter and Facebook. If you would like to have a post featured on my site then click here.

If you are like me, I used to think someone needed to be appointed to a leadership position, where they’re paid to be a leader or a leadership role given the position overseeing other people. It’s much more than that, and you can start right where you’re at. In fact, leadership is one way to add lots of value to people, here’s 3 points that tie into the premise of leadership.

I’m going to give you a 3 key ideas how you can add value to other people in any area of life by design. It’s ok to learn by trial and error and improve your leadership ability along the way and it’ll pay you more ways than one.

1. You Are Here.

The first lesson in leadership is your journey starts where you are not where you want to be. What this means you don’t need to be placed into a leadership position to be leading.

2. The Leadership Skills Stay The Same, But The Game May Change.

What I mean by this is the leadership principles can be simple, but you can apply them to leading a volunteer group, leading a project among several partners, or leading people within your business organization. When you step up to organize people to a common purpose you add value to every member you lead.

3. Lead A Town Before You Lead A City

Many people want to hit the big leagues before they do anything small. They think a small coordinated effort is not worthy of being called “leadership”, or believing you have to be leading thousands right from the beginning. If you start small you can use your small victories to propel you for bigger things. If you come across a big opportunity you will be far more ahead and have more experience by starting with small victories you experienced leadership in the past and this will help build your credibility with other people. The best way to learn is by doing.

The self test that you can give yourself is that if you can lead a group of volunteers and you can lead almost anyone. Now how can I say that? Because why would it be so difficult because with volunteers you have no leverage it takes all the leadership skills you can muster up to get them to do anything the you ask because if they don’t like it, they can just leave. If you push too hard, they will just drop out. If your people skills are weak, they won’t want to spend any extra time with you.

This is a great way to train other people in the lessons of leadership as well. Anyone that wants to start off in leadership this is a great learning lesson by volunteer in your community and gather up the team see how much you can accomplish, also this will reveal some areas in Leadership in which you can improve.

As Donald McKinnon, former CEO of Westinghouse Broadcast Corporation has said, “leadership is action, not position”, Taking action and helping others to do the same in a coordinated effort is the premise of leadership.

“Taking action and helping others to do the same in a coordinated effort is the premise of leadership.”

–click to tweet

Consider that after a project is complete that you have provided leadership to some capacity would have never finished if it had not been for your leadership. Imagine everyone in your team saying the project was “rewarding” to complete, but we could not have done it without you. That’s adding value to other people.

Next time you have the chance to be a part of the team or be leading the team challenge yourself to step up. Not for your own self-image or ego, but for the value it adds to the team to have you facilitating the results.

We covered 3 very clear ways you can start leading right where you are, without being given a position, you can appoint yourself into leadership. What would happen if the next time you volunteered in your community you offered to lead a project? Do this often enough and you can’t help but grow in your leadership…and make some friends along the way.

Question: What are some other ways a person can start leading right now?