Like others here, I tend to end up in charge by default. In the Army we called it "Voluntold".
Early in my career I was working for a temp agency and got a position working in the back office file room of a bank. It was a mess as no two people seemed to agree on how the files were to be organized. Some people went by last name, others by first name and a few files went by the borrower's nick name. So the Bill Johnson file was sometimes in the B's for Bill, the W's for William, the J's for Johnson or the R's because everyone called him "Red". It was maddening and I simply stated that I was reorganizing the files by Primary Borrower Last Name and expected everyone to leave it that way, and they actually did. I also changed the process for people checking files in and out of the file room because we had a disturbing amount of "missing" files which were either misfiled or sitting in a loan officers desk who forgot they had it.
The big project involved a number of loan files that were being sold. They were kept in a separate part of the file room so they wouldn't get mixed up with the files we were keeping. I suggested that we take the next step of boxing them up so that they were ready to ship out when the time came. The other file room people thought that sounded like a lot of extra work they didn't need to do just yet. I pushed anyway and even offered to use this highly advanced computer software called Microsoft Excel to keep the boxes organized. They agreed and it took about two weeks to order enough bankers boxes and get the files boxed, about 50-60 boxes labeled and organized in a computer spreadsheet. Then about a week later the vice president of the bank came down and said the sale had gone through and asked how quickly we could get the files ready to ship out. Everyone pointed to me and I handed the VP a printout of all files and box numbers telling him they were ready to go, they just needed the lids to be taped down. He said 'Great, the truck is coming to pick them up first thing tomorrow!'
There was no way we could have gotten the files ready in one day so everyone in the file room was glad I had the foresight to get the files boxed and organized and the VP was impressed by my leadership in this as well as getting the rest of the file room running more efficiently. He said something about me being officially in charge of the file department and I told him I didn't think that would work since I was just a temp. He hired me on the spot and put me in charge and I was seen a the go-to guy for problem solving and special projects.
Some years later a different VP stopped me as I was walking some papers to my desk. He said that there was a meeting happening in about 3 minutes where they were going to be discussing a new project they wanted me to work on. I was excited to get the new project as it was something I had already been looking at. I grabbed a notepad and paper and sat in the corner of the room ready to take notes. When the meeting started the guy who invited me last second stood up and made introductions if everyone in the room. The final introduction was me, and he said "This it Steve, he the one who's going to be heading up this project and working with all of you. So at this point I'm turning the meeting over to him!" At which point I stood up and started leading a meeting I didn't even know about until five minutes prior.
