The Surprising Power of Leading Without Authority in Any Group

You notice your coworkers constantly joke about how inefficient your team’s meeting schedule is. After a few weeks, you decide to do something besides just commiserating. On a rainy Tuesday, you send a quick message to a few colleagues, inviting them for coffee to talk about what’s not working. The conversation is relaxed, people laugh as they swap stories about email chaos and calendar mishaps. During the chatter, you suggest creating a simple shared calendar for everyone to mark critical events. Someone else offers to help set it up.

By Thursday, there’s a buzz about the new shared calendar. Team members begin suggesting tweaks and it becomes a small project that others want to join. One person even brings in cookies to the next “calendar crew” get-together. The energy shifts; people start to look for other problems you all might tackle next.

This is an example of bottom-up leadership: you didn’t wait for a title or ask for permission. By connecting people around a shared challenge and making communication easy, you fostered a “tribe” that moved from passive frustration to active problem-solving. Behavioral science shows that group identity and peer-to-peer communication are the foundation for lasting collective action. Small, informal beginnings are often how real leadership starts, regardless of your official authority.

If you’re feeling stuck or waiting for someone else to make things better, pause for a moment and look for a problem that quietly frustrates your group. Invite a few peers to discuss—even informally—what could be different. Set up a simple channel where everyone can talk and share ideas. Take the initiative by proposing an experiment, no matter how small, to address the problem you’ve all noticed. It’s often the person who acts, not the one with the title, who energizes others. So try this today: reach out, gather, and get the ball moving.