Anyone who has a sphere of influence can be considered a leader.

— Daniel Goleman

I read this quote today that got me thinking. What kind of influence? Influence can be good or bad and if one looks at the history of the world, one can see elements of both positive and negative influences at play.

In today’s parlance, you do see a lot of social media influencers around. People who use their influence to their own advantage. Influence has become a business by itself. And there are a lot of engineered influences where influencing by itself is a goal for monetary or other ends. Or take politics as another example. Influence is used as borderline coercion. This sort puts authentic influencers on the sidelines, the ones with real talent seem to become outliers competing with the influencers who are inauthentic to any cause but to themselves.

So influential leadership has enormous value. But be beware of the self-serving so-called leaders who are just around to take advantage. These seem to be the norm. Buyer beware.