Let me present you with a made-up story about a perfectly real scenario that plays out regularly in businesses, peer groups, and organizations all the time.

Three friends agree to meet every Monday morning at 6am at a local beach to go for a run together. On the third week, friend #1 is running late and shows up 15 minutes after the hour. The next week, friend #2, noting to himself that friend #1 was late last week and assuming the same might happen this week, decides to catch a few extra minutes of sleep and arrives 10 minutes late. The next week, friends #1 and #3, not wanting to be the suckers that get there early and have to wait for everyone else, don’t make any effort to rush to their meetup spot, and roll in around 6:20am. The pattern continues, and pretty soon the meeting time has changed from a prompt 6:00am to a casual 6:30am, but only if you feel like it, and the Monday morning meetup soon dissolves all together.

This is the story of leaders behaving as followers.

Everyone who participates in something -- be it a friendly beach run meetup, a Fortune 500 company, a small business, or a sports team -- is a leader. As a social creature acting as a part of something larger than you, you have the opportunity (and responsibility) to lead. When you ignore this in-born leadership responsibility and take on the role of follower, you inherently sink to the lowest standard established by your peers (as in our above example). It is the prisoner’s dilemma played out in a low-stakes, slow fall to mediocrity.

I would encourage you not to take this responsibility lightly. If you’re standing around waiting for someone else to set a higher standard, or excusing yourself from the standards because someone else is doing the same, you are the problem as much as they are. What’s more, you could be the solution. Stop waiting for someone else -- you’re the leader, too.