For one of our Leadership Academy sessions, we were asked to read a 2000 Harvard Business Review article titled Why Should Anyone Be Led by You? The article itself was thought-provoking, but it is the question in the title that has stayed with me. It is one of those deceptively simple questions, like “What are you really afraid of?”, “What would you do if you knew you could not fail?”, or “What kind of person do you want to be?”, that people can spend a lifetime trying to answer.

When I first sat with it, I noticed that the question immediately surfaced both my self-perceived strengths as a human, such as empathy, attention to detail and genuineness, and my most familiar self-doubts. My knee-jerk response was something like, “Well…because I’m nice?” which I quickly followed with, “Come on, Jana. That’s not helpful.”

But maybe that tension, the space between confidence and humility, is exactly the point.

One of the most critical qualities for any leader is self-awareness. And here is the uncomfortable truth: the moment we believe we have reached peak self-awareness, we have almost certainly proven that we have not. This question, Why should anyone be led by you?, forces us to strip away our job titles, our technical expertise and the instinct to defend ourselves with accomplishments. People do not follow us just because we know how to do the work. They follow because of who we are while we are doing it.

And that is both grounding and humbling.

When we take the question seriously, it invites us to reflect on how we show up: our steadiness, our curiosity, our compassion, our willingness to take responsibility, or our ability to make others feel seen. It also nudges us to notice when our self-doubt is holding us back from stepping into the influence we already have.

Because leadership is not about having all the answers. It is about navigating that middle space, humble confidence. The kind of confidence that is grounded rather than flashy, and the kind of humility that is open rather than self-diminishing.

This question can truly rock you if you let it. And I hope you will. Whether you lead a team, a project, a classroom, a conversation or even just yourself through a difficult season, someone is paying attention. Someone is learning from you. Someone is being shaped by the way you interact, respond and care.

So, I encourage you to pause, just for a moment, and ask yourself: Why should anyone be led by you?

Not to judge yourself. Not to justify yourself. But to better understand the leader you already are and the leader you are becoming.

Reference
Goffee, R., & Jones, G. (2000). Why should anyone be led by you? Harvard Business Review, 78(5), 62–70.