🧭 Leadership Starts With You: Understanding, Supporting, and Leading by Example

What is leadership?

It’s more than a title or a position. True leadership is about responsibility, empathy, and example. It’s not just about doing the job—it’s about knowing the job, understanding your people, and being willing to walk beside them, especially when the work gets tough.

Leadership is influence. Done well, it uplifts, motivates, and empowers. Done poorly, it can demoralize and divide. A leader’s actions ripple through their team, shaping morale, performance, and culture.

🔹 Boosting Your Team

A leader’s role is to build up their team—to encourage growth, recognize effort, and be present when support is needed. It’s about creating an environment where people feel valued, heard, and empowered to succeed.

Being there for your team, especially during challenging moments, is a powerful way to show that leadership is about service—not status.

🔹 Leading by Example: A Personal Story

During my time as a Facility Supervisor with Paladin Security, our site introduced a bicycle patrol program. Officers were to undergo a 12-hour training course led by the University of Guelph Campus Police—an intensive, full-day experience spent mostly on the bike, learning patrol techniques and navigating the terrain.

As a supervisor, I wasn’t required to take the course. Initially, my manager didn’t plan to send me. But I volunteered anyway—because I believed it was essential to understand what my team was experiencing. I wanted to know the physical demands of patrolling in the heat, riding through the grounds and up a five-storey parking structure. I wanted to understand the equipment, the fatigue, and the unique challenges they faced.

Though I offered to take the course unpaid and cover the costs myself, Paladin Security chose to support me fully—covering the course fees and paying me for my time. That decision spoke volumes about the company’s commitment to leadership and team development.

After completing the training, I joined my officers on patrols, wore the gear, and made sure they stayed hydrated. I didn’t have to do it. But I did it to show them that no job was beneath me, and that I respected their work as much as they respected mine.

This experience reminded me of a lesson I first learned in Junior Leadership Training in 1990 at Her Majesty’s Canadian Ship Quadra Sea Cadet Training Establishment:
There are 10 principles of leadership, and one of the most important is knowing your people.

Knowing the job helps you know your people. It helps you empathize with their challenges, understand what motivates them, and recognize what they struggle with. That understanding is the foundation of trust—and trust is the currency of leadership.

🔹 The Responsibility of Leadership

Leadership today is more than managing tasks. It’s about being accountable, staying grounded, and lifting others up. It’s about creating a culture where every role is valued, every voice is heard, and every person feels seen.

So ask yourself:
Are you leading from the front—or from behind a desk?
Are you building your team—or just managing them?
Are you showing up when it counts—or only when it’s convenient?

Leadership starts with you. And when done right, it changes everything.