The debate on whether leadership is innate or taught seems never-ending. A look at the academic research offers support for just about every perspective, but provides few definitive answers.
Leadership research often suggests that leaders possess certain personality traits. However, leaders are not ‘born leaders.’ In order to be successful, these traits must be developed and reinforced. It takes reinforcement of the stronger traits and development of the weaker traits to be successful. Throughout their careers, strong business leaders have been taught and mentored, and over time those natural born traits help them evolve into great leaders.
Are some people born with an ability to acquire leadership skills? Yes. Almost everyone has met at least one person who they quickly categorized as "definitely a leader" or "definitely not a leader." That elusive, intangible quality is the innate skill of leadership — the combination of vision and drive, an instinct for what direction the future will take, and the determination to get there. In our increasingly complex world, vision requires synthesizing numerous relevant inputs, cutting out the unimportant ones and making decisions based on experiences and gut.
The source of the debate is simple:
Organizations want to identify leaders and identify them earlier in their career. However, many organizations struggle to identify potential leaders within their ranks and lack the tools to identify them earlier.
Identifying potential leaders is especially critical in businesses that have experienced significant growth and potentially still operate as a small family business. At the same time, the leaders they hire from outside the organization also need to be able to apply their leadership skills to their new employer's business issues.
The method for identifying leaders needs to be precise, if organizations are going to spend money on leadership development, coaching, succession planning and/or development of high potentials. And, the pressure is considerable for this investment to produce bottom-line results.
A common mistake companies make is to confuse management with leadership. At its most basic aspect, leadership means to lead the way. What does that really mean?
Many define leadership as knowing the way and getting people to follow. Underneath these two basic aspects of leadership are activities. Leadership activities encompass many different areas, but the majority of these activities fall into three basic areas:
1. Setting a strategy and direction,
2. Ensuring people are in the right roles to achieve that strategy, and
3. Motivating and inspiring people to work to reach the strategy and direction.
The first major activity of leadership is setting a strategy and direction. This requires a lot of training as well as innate skills. Setting a strategy involves developing a plan for the future and also what changes and actions will be needed to achieve that plan. Good strategic leaders need to be comfortable taking risks and confident their vision will help achieve the results of the organization.
This is where development potential comes in. Gaining buy-in from others on that vision is also an important leadership skill that has an innate component, but can be greatly improved upon through development in self-awareness, confidence and understanding of others.
The innate component of the alignment skills is integrity. If the leader's plan is not based on integrity, alignment will be difficult to maintain.
So, how do you recognize who to develop? While researchers spend time defining it, businesses need to spend time learning how to recognize it.
According to The Conference Board report titled, “Developing Business Leaders for 2010, "only 34 percent [of survey respondents] report being effective at identifying future leaders."
Here are some ways to identify vision and alignment abilities early in an employee's career:
- Add leadership behaviors into a multi-rater evaluation process for employees early in their career. Many organizations do not measure employees against leadership skills until employees are in a leadership position. Looking for the behaviors early is critical.
- Give employees opportunities to lead internal initiatives or projects with the right support in place.
- Make it a habit to ask employees how they envision the direction of the company, project or task on an ongoing basis and see how it differs from what actually happens.
Finally, once you recognize that an employee has leadership potential, be sure to have a frank conversation about their interest in leadership before investing in him or her. It's a simple question that can save a lot of money, as some employees may not aspire to leadership roles.
Jessica Nelson is the Managing Partner at HR Remedy, LLC. HR Remedy is a human capital consulting firm that works with clients to attract, retain and develop their talent. HR Remedy takes a pragmatic and practical approach to helping companies manage their human capital. For additional information regarding HR Remedy and their services please contact Jessica Nelson. You can reach Jessica by contacting her at jessica@yourhrremedy.com or 281-528-1266 or by visiting our website at www.yourhrremedy.com.
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