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Consultant opinion
Leadership: talent or learning?
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We all once asked ourselves if we would enjoy taking over responsibility for one or more tasks. Some of us have done it and then we also got to lead people. Yet how many of us are leading people who are following us out of conviction?
We don’t always like the answers to this question.
I’m thinking here of a series of external constraints that make people follow their bosses: hierarchy, the project, the job, and last but not least, money. “Fear keeps the garden better than the gardener”, a Romanian proverb goes, but there’s no doubt people don’t like working under constraint, no matter on which side of it he or she is. How come that it has nevertheless such a strong impact on our lives?
What’s the special thing about those whom people follow out of their free will and of which we think they are natural born leaders?
If I think the four temperament types which Galenius distinguished – phlegmatic, choleric, sanguine and melancholy – and if I made a correlation between them and leadership, I see that I cannot identify one single phlegmatic or melancholy leader. Napoleon or Alexander the Great - melancholy? Or, returning to our today’s world, to two corporate leadership champions: Jack Welch or Aiko Morita - phlegmatic? That seems quite difficult to match.
Admitting that people belong more or less to one of these categories, you draw the conclusion that according to your personality type you either have or don’t have the precondition to become a leader. I am not saying that you are born with it, but it depends on the temperament traits if leadership “comes naturally” or not.
We have all heard people who say they would never be able to lead others, or that they would not like to do it.
Now think: if these persons would be convinced that this is something that can be learned, then they would not think that they are unfit for it any more. On the other hand, there are other people who never ask themselves if they can lead or not, but have a clear picture of the place where they want to get and they determinedly head towards it.
Let us also look at “charisma”: Originally it means “a natural gift given by God’s grace”. That is, it is given to you. It is neither about “savoir-faire”, nor about “savoir-être”, it is something going beyond both of them.
Let us see what traits define a leader:
"Leaders are inventors, risk-takers and entrepreneurs”, Thomas E. Cronin writes. "Leaders are individuals who can help create options and opportunities, who can help clarify problems and choices, who can build moral and coalitions, who can inspire others and provide a vision of the possibilities." Their self-assurance, optimism and idealism are catching and allow them to attract and mobilize others do things they never dreamed they could do. Leadership is in fact the ability to inspire others confidence in themselves.
You can indeed acquire problem-solving skills, with some ambition you can learn how to take risks and be assertive. Yet can you learn how to be an inventor, as Cronin says, or how to have a vision of the future? Can you learn to be an optimist and an idealist? A teacher will be able to coach you about less visible elements of human interaction, he can teach you decode and master body language and with the help of a good trainer you will be able to sharpen your emotional intelligence. You can learn indeed how to be structured and eloquent. But can you get training in charm or talent?
These are features which you either have or you haven’t.
Of course, being endowed with these traits does not automatically make you a leader. You need experience, challenges and exposure to a variety of situations in order to develop the features you were born with. Those who claim that leadership has to be learned are at least dishonest; chieftains, kings and warriors had been ruling the world a long time before leadership classes were invented.
As a matter of fact a lot of people get trained in order to become leaders. The question is just how much effort you have to put in so that you get as effective as somebody who is born with it, and how much effort you need to make in order to keep doing what you have learned. You learn in class a set of abilities to help you change the way you interact with the others so that what you say or do has more impact. And then, when you are stressed or tired your natural self often comes to light, just like your accent in a foreign language over a (second) glass of wine.
Courses offer you o series of instruments to complete the traits you were born with and the character you shaped in time. I agree: leadership potential can be developed – but it first has to be there.
Robert Maxim
Managing Partner
Ensight Management Consulting
This article was also published in Cariere, 15.11.2006
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