Book SummaryHow to Lead When You're Not in Charge, by Clay Scroggins

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of How to Lead When You're Not in Charge

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 up enough on the career ladder to act on them? In How to Lead When You’re Not In Charge, 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.

(Shortform note: Some business experts have a more concrete perspective on leadership than Scroggins. Instead of defining leadership as the ability to inspire, they say it’s the ability to influence results and help groups of people work together. These experts agree with Scroggins that the ability to lead isn't dependent on authority and can be learned, adding that four main behaviors...

How to Lead When You're Not in Charge Summary The Biblical Roots of Servant Leadership

Leadership is a serving position, Scroggins says. The vision of the future that you use to inspire people must benefit others, not just yourself. This is supported by the biblical Book of Genesis, in which God tasks humanity with subduing the Earth. In this context, he says, to “subdue” doesn’t mean to dominate or exploit. Rather, it means to direct the world in a way that helps it flourish and increase in beauty and usefulness. In other words, we’re responsible for helping the world (including other people) reach its full potential. Jesus epitomizes this kind of servant leadership: Despite having ultimate authority as God, he didn’t exploit humanity for his own benefit. Instead, he improved the lives of the poor, the sick, and the marginalized, helping them flourish.

You can follow Jesus’ example and embrace servant leadership by building strong relationships with the people around you and creating positive change wherever you can. This increases other people’s confidence and trust in you, so they’ll be more likely to accept you and help you achieve your goals, even if you don’t have any official authority. (We’ll discuss Scroggins’s specific methods for embracing...

How to Lead When You're Not in Charge Summary The Danger of Confusing Authority With Leadership

Previously, we discussed how God gave humanity the responsibility to lead. Unfortunately, you may neglect this responsibility because you mistakenly believe that you must hold a position of authority to be a leader. This belief stops you from realizing your true leadership potential: Instead of embracing opportunities to practice leadership and create positive change in your current role, you wait for someone to give you a position of authority.

(Shortform note: In The 5 Levels of Leadership, John C. Maxwell says you do need to hold a position of authority to be a leader. He defines five levels of leadership and says you must progress through them in order, as each level builds to the next. The first level is positional leadership, where people follow you because of your role. Scroggins’s description of leadership largely fits with Maxwell’s second level, where people follow you because they trust you. So, Maxwell says you must hold a position of authority _before...

How to Lead When You're Not in Charge Summary Embrace Leadership of Yourself

The main area you can control is yourself, Scroggins says. This is the most essential kind of leadership to embrace, as it’s the area you have intrinsic control over: You'll always have authority over your own behavior, regardless of your position in an organization. By behaving well, you can increase people’s trust in you and encourage them to see you as a leader.

(Shortform note: Some psychologists say you can only control yourself. No matter how much you want to—or what position of authority you hold—you can’t control other people’s behavior. Even the legal system can’t do it: Governments try to control people’s behavior by establishing laws, but people can still choose to follow or break those laws. So, focus on controlling your own thoughts, behaviors, and emotions. These psychologists don’t mention increased trust in you or your leadership abilities as a benefit of doing this. However, they say it’ll help you hold yourself and others to higher standards and potentially inspire others to behave better, too.)

In this section, we’ll explore a few types of...

How to Lead When You're Not in Charge Summary 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...

Shortform Exercise: Lead Your Environment

Scroggins says practicing leadership builds trust with other people, increasing the odds that they’ll support you in meeting your goals. One way you can practice leadership is by changing your environment—the elements of an organization that you interact with regularly—for the better. In this exercise, you’ll work through three steps to improve your environment.

First, identify your boss’s priorities. This information can help you choose relevant issues to solve. For example, your boss’s current priority might be reducing expenses.