Leaders - Born or Made?

Leaders – Born or Made?

I will take the easy way out and agree that it is a “little bit of both”. If we look at some of the greatest business leaders in the 20^th century, we will see that there are certain characteristics that are nourished over time including vision, passion, integrity, humility and creativity. These qualities were noted on my March 3, 2012 blog entitled “qualities of leadership”. 

Typically in many organizations the right to “lead” comes after individual performance that may have little or nothing to do with leadership.  Think about the sales representative who believes his next step in his career is management.  He is told “prove yourself first” by winning Sales representative of the year and then we will talk about your promotion. Being a top sales representative has virtually nothing in common with being a leader yet this is the paradigm that most organizations have been working with for years.  We need to distinguish between the skill of performance and the skill of leading the performance, two entirely different skill sets.

It's also important to determine whether a person is capable of learning leadership. Not everyone has the ability to “orchestrate”.  We have all witnessed people who can be a great individual producer but fail miserably when put in a team role. All one needs to do is look at the current NFL rosters and pick out the “individuals” from the team.  These individual performers can be likened to cancer which you will want to stop quickly in its benign state before it turns malignant and spreads chaos throughout a team. The natural leaders will stand out. The trick is identifying those who are capable of learning leadership over time.

Here are several traits to help identify whether someone is capable of learning to lead.

• History repeats itself.  Look to the past as a best predictor of the future.
• Competitive in a team-oriented way.
• Solution oriented rather than just posing problems.
• Accountability
• Humility
• Commitment to getting the job done!
• Mental toughness.
• Peer respect.
• Character

If we focus on leadership potential and the ability to learn as primary factors and limit our selection process to solid core values and character fundamentals we can help minimize the chance of ineffective leadership.

To lead and inspire others, the manager needs to continue to develop and refine their skills from managing to leading.  The leader works to create a vision for the team versus mere goal setting.  They are able to instill passion rather than simply motivation.  Recognizing the need that leaders need to be coached and continue to learn and develop collaborative skills can help keep egotism out of the picture.