In a job situation, how would you perform as a leader?

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I found that I performed quite well in periods, but my perfectionism and poor social skills made my stress levels go sky high and in a cuple of years, I burned out. Anyone had experiences, or if not, how can you imagine yourself as a leader?

tyrannically and badly. i would think i was doing a really good job and later i would find out the staff thought i was a nutcase who was obsessed with social justice and fairness in the workplace.

pretty much what millie said.
I am no leader.
I like to play follow the leader.

In my experience, I perform better as a leader than as a team member, because my role is clearly defined as a leader, whereas things within a team are more indistinct.

It often depends almost entirely on how people get along with my autistic behaviour. Whether they pay me the same respect as they do to a normal person or whether they decide there's reason to respect a person with autistic behaviour.

I would just be a total Hitler and treat people as tools.

I actually rejected two managerial positions that I was offered in my previous jobs because I knew I was going to become a tyrant and I didn't want to jeopardise the social positions I worked so hard on.

I would not even attempt to be a leader. I don't like being a follower. Personally. I would prefer there not be a "team" so I wouldn't have to do either. I consider myself an observer & would prefer a job where I could, at the very least, be my own boss. Unfortunately, I'll soon be starting school to become a librarian, so I won't have that choice in that career.

Horrible... well at first.

My speaking style doesn't instill confidence in people, even when I know what the hell I'm talking about.

I'm also usually horribly unprepared which means I have to think about a bunch of things at once with people rushing to me for something to do. This forces me to multitask, which I'm bad at... so I just slow everything down.

I'm also slow to act, but feel that I should be fast in a leadership position. So this is another conflict.

I also have a terrible working memory, so I can't keep track of everything that is going on.

I'm also easy going, and deep down I'm always searching for approval.

I won't say that I could never be a good leader. I just need training and to be well prepared... I probably wouldn't be the greatest leader... but I could get the job done and be liked enough... which is strange because at my best I'm more liked that your average boring person.

I'm too independent to be a good follower... I just go off and do my own thing. I try to follow the leader... but if the leader doesn't make sense in demands... I slowly build resentment until I just don't care and I do whatever I think is the best solution to the problem... that's assuming I care about what we are trying to accomplish. If I don't even care about that, I just casually make sarcastic jokes and mess around.

My best role is for the leader to trust and understand my ideas... an advisory position.

I was put in this situation in the past when my company was trying to see who would take over my department when my supervisor left. All I can say is, I didn't get the promotion. I found that I do not suck up enough, but my new supervisor is the world's worst. I found that I am piss-poor at giving instructions to others. I feel like no one can take me seriously. I thought about it from this perspective: would I take orders from me? I do not believe I would. I do not make eye contact, I fumble with my words, and I simply confuse people. Often when I am trying to explain something to a coworker, they are more lost when I finish my explanation than before they asked me.

Here is an example of how confusing I can be: yesterday I had a coworker come in and ask if anyone had change for a dollar. She wanted a snack out of the snack machine and only had a $1 bill. Our snack machine is old and does not accept dollar bills, and snacks cost 75 cents. I told her I would give her another dollar so she could get a drink out of the Coke machine (drinks are 75 cents also) and then she could use the change for her snack. To me this sounded perfect, but everyone else looked at me and someone said, "that doesn't make any sense!" And as I sat there and thought about it, I finally realized they were right - it made no fricking sense, making me look even more stupid than I usually do anyway.

So to answer your question, no, I would not make a good leader. And as bad as it felt to get passed up for a promotion that I had been working my ass off for, I do now understand the company's perspective.

In many of my previous jobs I have always become a leader of some sort. When I worked in kitchens I would eventually become a lead or "expeditor"" or (as with Mac Grill) executive pastry chef. When I worked as a server I almost always became a scheduler and trainer of new staff. In corporate jobs I enjoyed heading up special projects others tried to avoid. People usually refered to me as fair, decisive and unswayed by popularity issues. The dark side to that is when I would write employee reviews; I was acused of being too cold and removed. One woman left her assessment in tears. Her previous supervisors would simply rubberstamp her reviews with all 5s (highest rank) and write about how amazing she was. I gave her mostly 3s and a couple 4s (average to very good) because I saw nothing in her work that warranted anything higher. She had the store manager rewrite her review to suit her whims. From that point on I told her (quite directly) that I would not be responsible for her in my department. Anytime she had a question I sent her to the store manager; that if she didn't feel I was qualified to write her review, why did she think I was qualified to help her with her job? Needless to say we never got along after that and simply stopped talking to each other. A full year went by and we literally never spoke even though we sat at the same desk or worked in the same area. I never assigned her any duties (which pissed all the other people in my department off), she was eliminated from any departmental activites- she simply didn't exist.
At one point she filed a grievance- "hostile" work environment- against me. It was eventually dismissed after investigation. This only further caused me to avoid having anything to do with her.
With work, as in life, you're either with me or against me. No gray area, no middle ground.

I'm trying to go down a career path where the whole concept of leading and following is much milder, or doesn't exist in some cases.

I was a depertment supervisor at a factory for a couple years. Me being the perfectionist that I am, obsessively strived to make everyone happy, from the news guys at the bottom, to the guys above that I answered to. Well, it turned out that everyone was happy, except me. My anxiety levels were through the roof, and it drove me nuts. Eventually, I asked for my old position back, which only paid slightly less, with much less responsibility.

Although I don't work there any more, looking back it was one of the better decisions I had made in my life. Also, now that I've been on meds for a while, I am considering taking another supervisor position. Things like that bother me much less now.