Every month on our site, Jo Miller, CEO of Women’s Leadership Coaching Inc., will answer your career and leadership questions. Please send your question to advice@anitaborg.org and it may be answered in an upcoming column.

Question: My question comes in two parts. 1) How do I know if I would make a good leader? 2) Can you learn to be a good leader?

Answer:

Like many women, I have struggled with this question. Early on in my career, I turned down an offer to take my dream job: my first true management position. Despite working hard to position myself as the ideal successor to the role, I felt the stakes were too high if I failed. I didn’t think I had the chops to succeed.

I sense that the woman asking this question is going through a similar experience. She is waiting on the sidelines, looking for confirmation that she will make a good leader before she dives in and takes on a role that requires her to lead.

What if we were to substitute the word ‘leader’ for ‘swimmer’, and instead ask:

1) How do I know if I would make a good swimmer?

2) Can you learn to be a good swimmer?

Imagine going to a swimming pool for the very first time and waiting at the edge, never dipping a toe in the water, while searching for evidence that you’re a natural swimmer. Now really, how much sense does that make?

Leadership is similar in many ways. Most people aren’t born swimmers. There are a few individuals who were lucky to be born with natural leadership talents. The rest of us learn it by diving in and thrashing about, getting guidance from our mentors, practicing like crazy until we get good at it, finding our strengths along the way.

So how do you know if you will make a good leader? You won’t know unless you try. So I encourage you to just get started leading something.

Pick something to lead: it could be a project at work, or it could be a project with friends, in your community, with family, a professional organization, or a charitable cause. Choose something that is a bigger project than you could ever complete alone. Even better if it takes skills you don’t have personally and need to engage others for. Choose something you are passionate about because your excitement will entice collaborators, and you’ll have the drive and tenacity to persist if the going gets tough. The key is that this must be a project you complete by managing, not doing, the work.

No matter how the project turns out, do a self-assessment on how well you communicated the vision, engaged others, encouraged them, and how effectively you and your team were at delivering the desired results.

Then pick another project. Repeat!

After you’ve done this 5 or more times on increasingly complex projects, stop to reflect on these two great questions:

1) How do I know if I would make a good leader?

2) Can I learn to be a good leader?

Jo Miller is CEO of Women’s Leadership Coaching Inc. which offers women’s leadership seminars, webinars and coaching programs. To read more of her career advice, visit the Ask Jo archives.