Is a leader just good at making speeches?

I was lied to.

A few weeks ago I was sitting in a coffee shop in downtown Columbus, Ohio, when I overheard a conversation between two brothers. The older brother asked his younger brother if he regretted that he had so many student loans, in which his brother quickly replied, “No money in the world could change my mind about attending this college, I have learned so much. I’m in a fraternity, am involved in student government and work in the career center. I am a student leader.”

Upon hearing this last phrase, my own experiences flashed before my eyes.

Nine years prior to overhearing this conversation, I walked onto campus as a wide-eyed freshman knowing as much about college as I knew about quantum physics.

My career as a walk-on kicker for the football team was short-lived, and my knowledge of campus organizations did not extend past the informational flyers hanging in the men’s restroom. With absolutely no idea what my college career would look like, I would have laughed in your face had you told me in less than 24 months…I too would be considered a “student leader.”

You may have heard that phrase on your campus. You may have even been led (no pun intended) to believe that you are one right now. I like to believe I know a thing or two about this sub-category of the American college student. I have worked with them, studied them and at one time, attempted to be one.

Is the word “leader” a title, an action, a characteristic? Can one be a leader simply by being involved? Is a student a leader if they are simply elected to a leadership role?

In fact, my experience was no different than the kid in the coffee shop – 18-year-old kid goes off to college, joins a Greek organization, gets involved in numerous student groups, spends more time in co-curricular meetings than in the classroom, and soon enough the university is bestowing on them the elegant and dignified title of “student leader”.

I get the “student” part, as that title can be obtained simply by enrolling and paying your tuition bill on time. But “leader,” well that is such a loaded phrase.

Is the word “leader” a title, an action, a characteristic? Can one be a leader simply by being involved? Is a student a leader if they are simply elected to a leadership role?

In graduate school, my research focused on leadership. I chose the preeminent researchers and writers, Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner, who authored The Leadership Challenge to create my framework for qualifying what made a student a leader.

As my research group interviewed numerous students in leadership positions, I began reflecting on my own collegiate experience and defining to what extent I fit into these specific leadership traits.

My research provided three very important personal discoveries: first, never do qualitative research. It is much easier to assign numbers to data. Second, we are doing our students a disservice by immediately assigning them the title of “leader” and then expecting to them to perform as one. And third, I must debunk this myth that “leader” is synonymous with “involved.”

To be a leader, one must lead. They must inspire. They must hold themselves and others around them accountable.

Can we safely say that every student who is involved in a campus organization does not fit these basic criteria? If so, can we agree that we are lying to our students by calling them all “student leaders”?

Not every kid on the baseball team is a captain. Not every colleague in your office is a manager. And not every student who raises his or her hand to take a leadership position is a leader.

I used to buy into that myth. The university said I was a “student leader” so I fell hook, line and sinker into the idea that because someone called me a leader, I was, de facto, a leader.

Nine years later, after serving as a fraternity president, finishing graduate school and in my second big-kid professional position, I find myself wondering, was I? Is the kid sitting three tables over really a student leader? Or have we as a society began assigning titles to others without credibility?

The “student leader” myth may never be debunked, because that term is a way we assign identity to certain students.

It would be much easier to ask students to lead first and then assign them the title of “student leader”, rather than bestow the title upon them and wonder why they do not all act as such.

But, on second thought, then what would everyone complain about at Student Affairs conferences?

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