Leaders are Born Plus Made

Many times, people are promoted to positions of leadership and management without being formally prepared to function in the role. While some overcome the hurdles involve and perform well in their new positions, others do not. It generally assumed that individuals who perform well in their jobs and demonstrate competency would be a good leader.

What I have observed over the years is that some people are born with some instinctive ability to lead, which does not indicate that they have all it takes to successfully lead. In other word, they still have to learn somethings. The individual’s level of leadership skills stemmed from their positions within the leadership bell curve. Some people start out good and get better at how they lead. These individuals are often located at the top of the curve and they are often branded “born leader”. A great majority of the population are positioned in middle of the curve and the remainder of the population are at the bottom of the curve (minority). No matter how hard the latter group works on their leadership skill, they are not going to be good leaders. People located in the middle of the curve constitute the vast majority and they are brand “self-made” leaders.

The question now is: How can these individuals who assumed positions of leadership without any formal preparation or training develop their leadership skill and perform to expectation? One of the most important way is to develop self-awareness. Selfawareness is the foundation of leadership skills, and it is driven by a motivation to learn more about “self” through understanding of what influences individual’s decisions and actions. On a daily basis leaders must have an accurate sense of self, by understanding what their weaknesses and strengths are as leaders, have a clear understanding of how they impact others? How close do the promises I made line up with the actions? In addition to providing answers to the above questions, a leader also need to understand strategies, understand personality types, and have a good communication skills. Conclusively, if leadership trait is innate, formal training will neither be necessary nor needed.