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Transcript
Are leaders born or are they made? Is it something that you naturally get, that some people are just natural leaders, and because they’re natural leaders, they’re the ones who rise up and become leaders in organizations and companies?
And if you weren’t born with those genes and born with all that good stuff of leadership, then you can’t be a leader? Is that true?
Or is it that leadership is made? It’s something you can develop, something you can learn? Which one is accurate?
The myth of unlearnable traits
Well, the reason sometimes people think leaders are born is because they think there’s certain traits that make a leader. In the sense that traits that you’re born with.
One of the biggest ones I can think of is charisma. Sometimes people think, ah, that person’s charismatic, that makes them a leader because of their charisma. And that’s actually a whole nother topic with charisma.
Charisma can be a good thing, but it also can be harmful. Jim Collins from Good to Great found that the people of the most successful companies, the majority of them weren’t charismatic.
So that’s something to think about. Charisma in itself does not make you a good leader. And on top of that, charisma is something you can learn. I’ve read a couple good books about developing charisma and there’s stuff out there.
If you want to learn how to be more charismatic, there’s things you can do. But charisma doesn’t make a leader. There’s a lot more to leadership than charisma. You don’t even have to have charisma to be a leader.
So sometimes people think there are certain traits that make you, that you’re born with, that you have to have to be a leader. But that’s not true.
Leadership… actually I like how Simon Sinek said it. He said, “Leadership is like parenting. Everybody can be a parent, but not everybody should and not everybody wants to. Anybody can be a leader, but not everybody should and not everybody wants to.”
Leadership is a skill
Leadership is a skill that you can learn. And you can think of it as, say, refurbishing furniture. Some people may call that a skill. Or maybe guitar. You’re learning guitar, that’s a skill. And it’s really kind of made up of a subset of skills. Things you have to learn, different things you have to learn to be able to do it.
Leadership is a skill and because it’s a skill it’s something you can learn and it’s just the made up of different sub skills that to get good at it, you’re gonna have to learn the different skills.
For example if you want to be a good leader you probably need to work on your communication skills. You need to work on being able to listen well. There’s also other things you need to do like building trust with people, building influence, things of that nature that helps you be a good leader.
And the thing about leadership is, and sometimes people get wrong in today, is that leadership is not some one time thing you learn. You don’t go to a class and, oh boom, I’m a leader now. No.
You don’t just read one book, “well I read my John Maxwell book, I’m a leader now.”
No. I mean, you learn some stuff, but leadership is just like any other skill. I cannot play guitar one day, take one lesson, and think I know guitar. It takes a lot of time to learn guitar and become good at it.
People who are really good at any instrument, any sport, anything, they spend hours practicing and developing that skill. If you want to be great at leadership, it’s not a one-time thing you do. It takes time. You have to practice it. You have to keep learning, keep growing, and developing your skill over time.
Having a one-and-done course and stuff is not going to help you. It can be good to learn, those can be good things to remind you of things and grow you. And if it’s something you can keep going back to and learning from, that can be good.
But just doing a one and done course is not going to make you a great leader. It’s developed over time, just like any other skill.
So leaders are made, they’re not born.
If you want to be a leader, you can be a leader. You can develop yourself and later you just have to be willing to take the time and put the effort in to become a great leader.
Hope this helps. See you next time.
