3 Reasons to Stop Celebrating National Boss Day

National Boss Day is held every year on October 16^th or the nearest working day.  When I saw the calendar reminder pop up I starting asking myself why we even celebrate National Boss Day.  Shouldn’t we be celebrating leaders instead? Wouldn’t it be fantastic if we could move from Boss Day to Leader Day?  So I developed three reasons I think we should start celebrating leaders instead of bosses.

1. Being a boss is easy.  Think about it.  Anybody can tell someone what to do as long as they have an audience.  But a leader requires skill, training and years of practice to be exceptional at it.
2. A boss tells people what to do.  A boss will often have the it’s my way or the highway mentality.  Whereas a leader inspires others to want to do.  Whether a leader is getting buy-in on a direction, asking for input on a decision or creating a vision for their employees.  Employees will naturally follow a good leader and not because they have to.
3. A boss is “me” focused.  I need this done today.  I told you to fix this immediately.  A leader is “them” focused.  We can accomplish this. What does the team need to make this happen.

 Now I will admit that I made sure my boss had a card for National Boss Day but I also made sure it was one focused on what I appreciate and what he does well as a leader.  I also shared my thoughts with other leaders in our organization who agreed we should change the reason we celebrate this day.  And one of my coworkers found this cool Boss versus Leader chart that outlines my line of thinking as well.  This chart really made me think. What I could do to move my role from a boss to leader?  Which word would my employees use to describe me – boss or leader?  What do I need to work on to be a better leader?