Bossiness ≠ Leadership

I'm going to blog about leadership again, because that's I topic that I am TOTALLY qualified to blog about (Note: I am being sarcastic.), and I just found a post on Facebook that says "I want every little girl who is told she is bossy to be told she has leadership skills." Now, I have no problem with women being leaders. I know many women who have excellent leadership skills. The problem I have with the Facebook post is that "Bossy" is not a leadership skill.

There are big differences between a boss and a leader. In fact, there's a whole list of reasons:

Being a leader means more than bossing people around, even if you're good at it. Being bossy is not a leadership skill because bossing people around is not what good leaders do. Good leaders work with their team, not just tell their underlings to work.

Now, there are cases where employees have different jobs than their bosses, so those bosses have to say "you do this" rather than "let's do this," but even in those cases, both the boss and the employee should be working toward a common goal, and they should both be working  toward that goal. In my opinion, those who do not work are not fit to lead, especially when that leadership involves asking others to work.

While it's important to foster positive traits in others, we should be careful not to condone negative traits or to confuse negative traits with positive ones. A bossy individual my grow to become a great leader, but their bossiness would have been an obstacle to that progress. As a person who is trying to grow into the role of a leader, I should be careful to ensure that I do not become too much like a boss.