We tend to recognize leadership after it becomes impressive.

We notice the company someone built. The title they earned. The stage they stand on. The team they lead. The numbers that prove they succeeded.

We tell leadership stories from the other side of accomplishment.

But some of the most important leadership happens long before anyone gives you a title.

Sometimes it happens when nobody is applauding.

It happens when you finally face something you’ve spent years avoiding.

When you tell the truth.

When you stop blaming circumstances for choices that belong to you.

When you accept responsibility for the damage you’ve caused.

When you decide to become someone people can depend on again—and then begin the much harder work of proving it through the way you live.

That is leadership, too.

Leadership Is Bigger Than a Title

I’ve spent much of my career around leaders.

I’ve led companies, worked with executives and entrepreneurs, advised women carrying enormous responsibility, and interviewed highly successful people on my podcast.

But I don’t believe leadership belongs exclusively to people with impressive résumés.

A title can give someone authority.

It cannot make them accountable.

Success can give someone influence.

It cannot make them trustworthy.

Those things are built through behavior.

Leadership research has examined this connection between accountability, trust and leadership for decades. Trust influences how people respond to leaders, while accountability requires a willingness to be connected to (and answer for) our decisions, commitments and actions.

Which makes me think we may be looking for evidence of leadership in too few places.

Sometimes leadership isn’t found in what someone has built yet.

Sometimes it’s found in who they’re becoming.