We live in a time when almost everyone is invited to “build an audience.”
Post more. Engage more. Grow your following.
On most platforms, this kind of visibility is treated as proof of influence. If enough people watch your videos, share your posts, or like your updates, you are an “influencer.”
The language sounds strangely close to leadership.
We talk about “finding your voice,” “inspiring your followers,” “showing the way.” We celebrate reach, engagement, virality – and somewhere along the line, those metrics began to feel like evidence of being a leader. But they’re not the same thing.
An influencer, in the contemporary sense, is often defined by their ability to persuade a large audience to pay attention, buy, click, or share. Their work is to be visible, relatable, and compelling at a scale that feels useful to advertisers and brands.
Leadership, at its simplest, is the work of taking responsibility for people and outcomes.
It asks different questions.
Not “How many people follow me?” But “Who is impacted by my decisions?” Not “How visible is my lifestyle?” But “How sound is my judgement?”
Stephen Covey’s language of “circle of influence” was originally a call to focus on what we can genuinely affect – the people, issues and decisions within our sphere of responsibility – instead of worrying about what sits forever outside our control. Influence here was about practical agency and stewardship, not visibility.
Influencer culture flips that.
The more attention you can command, the more “influential” you are seen to be, regardless of whether you are accountable for any of the consequences that follow. A large audience becomes the proof. The impact on that audience – and on the communities beyond it – is often left unexamined.
That doesn’t mean all influencers are inherently superficial or harmful (though some are). Many use their platforms to educate, mobilise, or advocate. They raise awareness of issues that genuinely matter. Some are thoughtful, informed, and deeply committed. But it doesn’t automatically make them a leader.
Correlation is not causation. To equate “influencer” with “leader” carries too many assumptions.
If having followers becomes shorthand for leadership, we risk turning it into a performance: a curated life, a steady stream of content, a series of aspirational images of success, wealth or lifestyle.
Leadership becomes spectacle. Influence is a matter of how many people notice us, rather than how many people are better off because of the way we show up, decide, and act.
Someone with a strong online presence, a polished personal brand, or a gift for keynote delivery is assumed to be “a natural leader”. Their visibility outside the organisation becomes a proxy for credibility inside it.
Meanwhile, some of the quietest people – those who carry the heaviest responsibilities, who take the hardest decisions, who sit with the long-term consequences – may have little or no public profile at all.
Yet if their work disappeared, the organisation would feel it immediately.
It is not wrong to seek an audience or to share ideas widely. Many leaders today will need to communicate beyond their immediate team or organisation. The ability to form, articulate and distribute useful thinking is part of the job.
The question is not whether visibility is bad. It’s whether visibility is enough.
If the primary test of leadership becomes “Can you attract and hold attention?”, we’ve lost sight of some of the more demanding tests:
- Do you consistently align your decisions with the wellbeing of those affected by them, not just with your own growth or image?
- Do you stay with complexity when easy answers would look better on a slide?
- Do you carry the weight of consequences, not just the glow of applause?
- Do you make it safer for others to act with integrity, even when no one is watching?
Those questions rarely trend. They don’t fit neatly into a carousel post. Or a Tik Tok meme.
But they sit closer to what most people hope for from leadership in their lives: steadiness, clarity, fairness, courage, care.
Perhaps the more helpful way to relate “influence” and “leadership” is to treat influence as a resource, not an identity.
Influence – the ability to be heard and taken seriously – can be used well or poorly. It can be deployed in service of others, or primarily for the benefit of the person who holds it. It can deepen understanding, or oversimplify. It can open space for diverse voices, or shine the spotlight on just one.
Leadership, in that frame, is less about having influence and more about how we use whatever influence we have. Not every leader will be an influencer. Not every influencer will be a leader.
What matters is the orientation: whether our effort is going into making ourselves more visible, or into making the lives and work of others more viable.
So the next time we find ourselves impressed by follower counts, engagement charts, or the polish of an online presence, it might be worth pausing to ponder a simple question:
If the audience disappeared, and only the responsibilities remained, would this person still be leading?
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See Also: When a Leader Becomes the Hero (And Why That’s a Problem)