The Leadership Race: Claim and Grow a Leadership Quality

Most people think leadership belongs to whoever has the manager title. Tie leadership to rank and you send everyone else a quiet message: this isn't your job, just do what you're told. That's a waste, because real leadership lives in behavior — taking initiative, supporting a struggling colleague, raising an uncomfortable truth — and those acts happen at every level, every day, usually unnoticed. This leadership qualities exercise makes them visible. By having people step forward and claim concrete leadership behaviors they've actually done, it reframes leadership from a position into a set of actions anyone can own.

Why tying leadership to titles wastes most of your team

When "leader" means "manager," the majority of the team mentally opts out of leading. They stop noticing their own leadership behaviors and stop developing them, because they've been told, implicitly, that those behaviors aren't theirs to claim. Meanwhile the everyday acts that actually move teams forward — the person who quietly mentors a newcomer, who flags a risk no one else will — go unrecognized and therefore unreinforced. This exercise breaks the link between leadership and rank. Spotlighting concrete acts of leadership from across the team teaches everyone that they already lead, which is the first step to doing it more deliberately.

How do I develop a specific leadership quality?

You need a group, a list of leadership qualities, and about fifteen to twenty minutes.

1. An announcer names a leadership quality. Someone calls out a specific quality — "taking initiative," "staying calm under pressure," "supporting a teammate," "raising hard truths." One concrete quality at a time keeps it focused.
2. Anyone who embodies it steps forward. People who feel they've genuinely demonstrated that quality physically step forward (or raise a hand, on a call). The public act of claiming it is part of the point — it's a small, real commitment.
3. Each gives a quick real example. Those who stepped forward briefly say when they showed it: "I stepped in to lead the standup when our lead was out." Requiring a concrete example keeps it honest — you're claiming a behavior you actually did, not a self-flattering label.
4. The team validates, then move to the next quality. The group affirms the examples — a nod, a "yes, that counts," genuine acknowledgment. That validation is what makes the claim land and stick. Then the announcer names the next quality and you repeat.

A worked example

A team runs the leadership race. The announcer calls "supporting a teammate." A quiet analyst, who'd never think of himself as a leader, hesitates — then steps forward and says, "Last week I spent an afternoon helping the new hire untangle the reporting system." The team validates: that absolutely counts. You can see him register it — he just publicly claimed a leadership act and had it affirmed. As the qualities cycle through, nearly everyone steps forward for something, and the room's whole notion of leadership shifts: it's not the two managers' job, it's something they're all already doing. People leave more aware of their own leadership behaviors, which is the start of growing them on purpose.

When this exercise is most useful

It's great for flattening an overly hierarchical team's sense of who gets to lead, for developing leadership across a group rather than just at the top, and for team-building that builds confidence at the same time. It works well in cultures trying to encourage initiative and ownership at every level. Keep it genuinely safe and affirming — if claims get met with skepticism or competition, people will stop stepping forward. The aim is to recognize and encourage real leadership behaviors, not to rank who's the "best leader," which would defeat the entire purpose.

The takeaway

Leadership isn't a title you're granted; it's a set of behaviors you can choose, and most people are already doing them without noticing. This exercise names a quality, lets people step forward with a real example, and has the team affirm it — so everyone sees they can lead from where they sit. Run it, and watch your team start owning the leadership they were already quietly providing.

This is one of Funstorming's 100 quests — bite-sized soft skills methods you actually put into practice, not just read about. Try it, then bring your result (or your sticking point) to the Funstorming community of practice (CoP), FunHub | Your Soft Skills Playground.

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