Leadership. It’s included in countless LinkedIn bios, resume activity sections and interview preparation notes. Walk into any career fair, any club recruitment event or any admissions info session, and you will hear the same few words: we are creating leaders. But if everyone is a leader, what does that word even mean anymore? 

The cult of leadership on elite college campuses, and in our society writ large, is well-documented. Vanderbilt’s “about” page details how cultivating “future leaders” is a core value, while Harvard seeks to “educate the citizens and citizen-leaders for our society,” Yale “educates aspiring leaders worldwide” and Stanford is “preparing students for leadership.” Similar sentiments can be found in the mission statements of most colleges and universities. Meanwhile McKinsey is “elevating leaders to drive performance and transformational impact,” J.P. Morgan is “leading global financial progress” and Samsung promises to “perform responsibly as a leading, global company.” 

Clearly, the pressure to signal leadership is relentless. But perhaps we are just conflating positions with impact and title with talent. After all, throughout history, hasn’t some of the most meaningful work been done by people who never held a title at all? Emily Dickinson’s poetry only entered the literary canon after her death, van Gogh only sold one painting throughout his entire career and Rosa Parks was a local seamstress. Meanwhile, Oprah Winfrey, Abraham Lincoln and Nelson Mandela all started their lives with few resources and opportunities and only grew to become global figures through decades of hard work. 

Yet at Vanderbilt, it somehow seems that everyone is a talented visionary, an unparalleled leader who has created substantive impact through internships, student organizations and volunteerism. And I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve played this game. I’ve described myself as a “leader” in countless scholarship applications and website bios, and it’s even in the name of my major: Culture, Advocacy, and Leadership. But last fall, when I read William Deresiewicz’s polemic “Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life,” I began asking whether labeling myself as a “leader” was accurate — or even useful at all. 

For instance, research has shown that teams with too many self-identified leaders actually perform worse on complex, cooperative tasks. The most effective teams, it turns out, are built not on a surplus of leaders, but on a rich diversity of roles: organizers, listeners, doers, critics and yes, sometimes followers. Our obsession with being a leader can actually undermine our very own efficacy! 

This trend matters beyond the workplace, too. In a democracy already strained by deep polarization and low trust, we desperately need people who are willing to show up and do the unglamorous work that makes our society run. We need teachers, social workers, community organizers and public defenders, the kinds of roles that Vanderbilt’s Career Center don’t throw recruiting events for and that don’t make it onto LinkedIn taglines. But these roles are, arguably, the things that hold communities together. 

The problem isn’t that Vanderbilt produces leaders. It’s that we’ve narrowed the definition of a valuable person to mean someone who serves in a leadership position, as if the only legitimate way to contribute is to be at the front of the room. This framing encourages students to seek out positions of visibility over positions of impact, and it produces graduates who are more comfortable giving direction than taking it — a personality profile that, as any seasoned manager will tell you, makes for a very difficult colleague. Moreover, this desire for leadership pushes students to optimize their career pathways into prestigious, high-status jobs at consulting firms and finance roles that, as I’ve argued before, do little to address the urgent problems our generation has inherited. 

None of this is to say that leadership is worthless, or that we shouldn’t celebrate the students who organize, inspire and push their communities forward. The world does need some leaders. But it also needs people who are willing to be genuinely good at something without needing the recognition that comes with being in charge. It needs people who can subordinate their ego to the task at hand, who can follow someone else’s vision with full commitment and skill.  

So, Vanderbilt, are we teaching students to lead, or are we merely teaching them to perform leadership? After all, not everyone can be a leader. It’s time for us to embrace that.