Leaders who have positions of authority - be it a CEO of a publicly traded company, a mayor of a town, a minister of a church, or a president of a university - all have a job description they reviewed when they were hired. Even a company founder will at some point define their role in their company, so they do not escape this example. All those with formal authority, whether they know it or not, are answering to others (shareholders, citizens, parishioners, students and alumni, etc.).
The authority you wield is only as powerful as people allow you it.
That is why I prefer using the word leadership as an action, not a position; a position of authority tends to be limited by the job description posted within the organization. Conversely, leadership happens on the edges of your scope of authority.
Leadership does not mean going well outside of your authority - that is how people lose their jobs. Instead, leadership lives inside and outside the boundaries of your authority. Leadership means pushing the boundaries of your authority, which in turn means risking disappointing your bosses/peers/employees. You have to be willing to take risks and expect pushback, while also knowing when you are too far past the borderline.
So how do you measure your scope of authority? This is tricky - it is almost like being blindfolded in a room where the walls can expand out and contract inward at any given time. Your boundaries, while clear in the above illustration, are not fixed.
With that being said, here are a few ways to gauge where the edge of your authority ends and then begins:
(1) Measure the "heat" in the room around tough issues.
Many will claim they want to take on large-scale issues within their organization - diversity, climate change, innovation, etc. - but when the time comes to change the behaviors that will allow for this change, people will start to push back. The question is how much pushback are you getting?
Too little (or none) means you probably haven't gotten to the hot-button issue(s) yet, and thus not at the edge of your authority.
Too much might look like threats of job loss, personal attacks to your face, anger and fear expressed openly; all signs you have pushed the matter well beyond the border of your authority.
The "goldilocks zone" for where your authority ends and leadership begins is looking for some level of pushback, such as making the room slightly to moderately uncomfortable, and thus provoking thoughtful dialogue and debate about core issues. People begin getting engaged and start using curiosity about what you have brought up for further exploration.
This may not make everyone happy, but the discomfort that is below the flight/fight/freeze mode is relatively where you want to be. Too low, and nobody is engaged nor do they care to act. Thus, checking the "temperature" in the room (aka the level of heat) is a key way to check where your authority ends and leadership begins.
(2) Make small, deliberate departures from your scope of authority. Find the time and place where you can take a small step over that scope of authority. Maybe that looks like having a private conversation with someone from an opposing faction (aka someone who disagrees with your desired direction to take your organization). Take them out to coffee, have lunch, and talk about what common ground you can find. Then bring that conversation up (within the scope of permission from the other side) with your boss or a constituent. Their reaction will help you gauge how far you went over the line (or not far enough).
The overall point is to take smart risks across your scope of authority. Implementing a company-wide initiative to allow a 4-day work week might be a bit (or more) outside of your scope of authority. However, raising an experiment with a department or office within the company to allow them to work 4 days a week on a timeline of 6 months may be just enough to make your boss uncomfortable, but not as risky as losing your job.
(3) Admit to your mistakes and your "part of the mess". How you operate in your organization matters. If you operate with integrity, humility, and high ethics - people tend to respect and admire that (with limited exceptions, such as the status quo being...well not quite ethical). Not owning up to your mistakes, or admitting your contribution to the challenge you are trying to make progress on, will cause your public perception to decrease. This is how people's informal (and sometimes formal) scope of authority shrinks.
On the other hand, If you admit to your part of the mess, and admit where your experiences or decisions went wrong, you either save your public perception or increase it more. Thus, you find your scope of authority still intact... or it expands!
Working outside your scope of authority is a test of your risk tolerance. But if you accept that leadership happens on the borderline - inside and outside - of your scope of authority, then logic follows that you have to be a smart risk-taker. Finding the balance is something you must do, and do it often. Without your leadership and the leadership of others, the world becomes a boring and stagnant place; so be someone who dances on the edge of their authority when looking to make a change for the better!
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