What Is Your Leadership Currency?

Recognizing the Value You Already Bring to the Table

We are always hunting for currency.

Across history, we've counted our wealth in everything from beans and beads to coins and gold. Today we watch bank balances, investments, property values, and Bitcoin. We measure what we have, what we've earned, what we've saved, and what we might someday acquire.

We have become very good at recognizing value when it comes with a number attached.

But we often forget to count the currency we carry into the room with us.

I know I do.

I can look at a bank account and tell you what it's worth. I can look at an investment and calculate whether it has gained or lost value.

But ask me to put a value on my imagination?

My experience?

My ability to see possibilities other people haven't seen yet?

My voice?

My instincts?

The things I've learned from succeeding?

Or perhaps even more importantly, the things I've learned from failing?

Suddenly, the accounting gets a little harder.

And yet those things have value.

They are currency too.

Maybe some of the most important wealth we accumulate in a lifetime will never appear on a balance sheet.

Originality Is Currency

In The Creative Leader's Edge, I write:

“Originality is your currency.”

I've been thinking about what that really means.

Originality isn't about being different simply for the sake of being different.

It isn't ego.

It isn't walking into every room determined to prove you're the smartest or most creative person there.

And it certainly isn't rebellion simply because you don't like being told what to do.

Originality is something much more useful.

It is the particular combination of experience, imagination, instinct, knowledge, perspective, curiosity, and creativity that allows you to see what you see.

Nobody else has lived your exact life.

Nobody else has learned precisely what you've learned in precisely the way you've learned it.

Nobody else has experienced your successes, survived your failures, developed your relationships, followed your curiosities, made your mistakes, or connected those experiences in exactly the same way.

That combination creates perspective.

And perspective has value.

Currency Is Meant to Do Something

Here's where I think the metaphor becomes important.

Currency isn't valuable simply because we possess it.

We use it.

We exchange it.

We invest it.

We put it to work.

Creative currency works the same way.

An idea can solve a problem.

Experience can prevent a mistake.

Imagination can reveal an opportunity.

Story can help people understand why something matters.

Insight can change a decision.

Instinct can make us stop and examine something everyone else has accepted.

Originality can create something that didn't exist before.

That's value.

And when we learn how to take what we see and translate it into something other people can understand, use, build upon, or believe in, our creative currency begins creating movement.

That's where originality becomes leadership.

As I wrote in the book:

“Creativity isn't chaos. It's code.”

Creative leaders learn how to translate that code into action.

What Are You Bringing to the Table?

We hear this phrase all the time.

What do you bring to the table?

Usually, we're asking about qualifications.

Degrees.

Experience.

Technical skills.

Professional accomplishments.

Those things matter.

But I think the table is bigger than that.

Maybe you bring an ability to recognize connections between things that appear unrelated.

Maybe you're the person who can walk into chaos and instinctively begin creating order.

Maybe you can tell a story that helps everyone finally understand the idea they've been struggling to articulate.

Maybe you notice people.

Maybe you ask extraordinary questions.

Maybe you can take a huge vision and see the first three steps required to make it real.

Maybe you recognize possibility before there is evidence that it will work.

Maybe you have lived through something that taught you what no classroom ever could.

Maybe you know how to get people moving.

Maybe you know when everyone needs to stop.

These things don't necessarily appear on a résumé.

They don't always come with certificates.

And sometimes the things we do most naturally are the very things we undervalue most.

Of course I can do that.

That's nothing special.

Doesn't everybody think that way?

No.

They don't.

And that doesn't make you better than anyone else.

It makes you valuable in a particular way.

Someone else is carrying currency you don't have.

That's one of the reasons we need each other.

Who Gets to Set the Exchange Rate?

This may be one of the harder parts.

We spend an enormous amount of our lives allowing other people to tell us what our currency is worth.

A salary does it.

A promotion does it.

A job title does it.

An award does it.

A contract does it.

A book sale does it.

A follower count does it.

A yes does it.

And a no certainly can.

External measures matter. We live in a world where money pays mortgages and opportunities can change careers. Pretending those things don't matter isn't useful.

But they cannot be the only measures we use.

Because sometimes a room simply doesn't recognize the currency you're carrying.

I learned that lesson through experience.

I once saw an opportunity, developed an idea, built a plan, and helped create the early momentum around a project I believed could become something important.

Then I was told to stay in my lane.

So I stepped back.

And I watched other people take the project forward.

I watched people receive praise and recognition on a foundation I had helped build.

For a long time, I thought that experience was primarily about being overlooked.

I've come to understand something else about it.

The idea had value.

Other people eventually recognized that.

I simply hadn't understood my own currency well enough to protect my relationship to what I had created.

That realization matters to me now.

Because sometimes the first person who needs to recognize the value of what you bring to the table is you.

Creative Currency Can Be Spent Poorly

We can also spend our currency in places that don't value it.

We can give away ideas because we're grateful simply to have been invited into the room.

We can repeatedly offer insight to people who have demonstrated that they don't respect it.

We can pour imagination into projects that drain us without ever asking whether the exchange is fair.

We can keep proving ourselves to people who have already decided not to see us.

And we can become so desperate for someone else to validate our value that we hand them the authority to determine it.

Personal leadership requires us to become more intentional about where we invest ourselves.

Not selfish.

Not guarded against collaboration.

Intentional.

There will be times when you contribute without receiving something immediate in return. There will be projects you support because you believe in the mission. There will be people you help simply because helping them matters to you.

Not every exchange needs to produce a profit.

But you should know when you're making an investment.

And you should know what you're investing.

Take Inventory

So maybe we need a different kind of balance sheet.

Forget the bank account for a moment.

Forget the title.

Forget what somebody pays you.

Forget the number of followers beside your name.

What are you carrying?

What have you learned?

What can you see?

What can you build?

What can you communicate?

What happens when you walk into a room that wasn't happening before you arrived?

What do people consistently come to you for?

What seems obvious to you that other people find difficult?

What have you survived that has given you perspective?

What have you created?

What do you know how to make possible?

That's your inventory.

And I suspect many of us are wealthier than we realize.

I know I sometimes forget.

That's why this conversation matters to me too.

Recognizing our own value isn't arrogance. It doesn't require believing we're more important than anyone else in the room.

It simply means understanding what we're bringing with us when we enter it.

Because once you understand your currency, you can become much more intentional about where you spend it, where you invest it, how you develop it, and what you build with it.

And perhaps the question changes.

Instead of constantly asking:

What am I worth to them?

We can begin asking:

What currency am I carrying, and what do I want to do with it?

In The Creative Leader's Edge, I call originality a compass.

Maybe this is one of the reasons why.

It doesn't simply tell you that you have value.

It can help you decide where that value belongs.

Know your currency.

Trust your compass.

Choose where you invest yourself.

Thank you for spending a little time at The Creative Leader’s Edge.

I believe creativity is more than something we make. It is part of how we think, how we lead, and how we imagine what comes next.

What did this idea bring up for you? I welcome your thoughts, experiences, and perspectives. If something here resonated, please follow, subscribe, and share it with another creative spirit finding their way forward.

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