We all know how important leadership is and developing leadership is one of the main areas of concern of the modern corporate world.
One of the questions that is often asked is:
Are we born leaders or is it a learned skill?
We all know how important leadership is and developing leadership is one of the main areas of concern of the modern corporate world. One of the questions that are often asked is:
Are we born leaders or is it a learned skill?
In all my years of working in the corporate world and observing other co-workers, it was really apparent that there are some people who look like they are born great leaders. They are very natural at leadership positions but if you told them to teach you they could not say exactly what it is that they do. Ironically, when companies invest in leadership programs these are usually the people that thrive by doing these programs. It is interesting to notice that whenever I have met people who love leadership programs is usually the people who were good at it, to begin with, and maybe they don’t even need it.
Then there are these people who are not so good at it. They might be excellent at what they do and have amazing skills but leadership is not their thing. Often people with such great skills get promoted to higher positions but they often struggle because they have to manage more people. These are the people that need leadership development programs the most and in many cases these programs have little or no effect on them.
SO why is it when leadership development programs don’t work or when our efforts of trying to become better leaders are not working?
In my opinion, the biggest problem that we are facing in developing leaders is that we
are trying to make good leaders from the outside in. We are trying to show people what are behaviors and characteristics that we see great leaders have on the outside like:
Listen and communicate effectively
Serve as a role model
Be positive
Always see the bigger picture
and we say to them :
“you do that and you will become a better leader”
What we do is we give them great tips, ideas, techniques, things to say in order to influence others.
And it is not that these are wrong characteristics or we should not have them. Actually, we can see that great leaders all have these characteristics but what the problem is here, is that
people are not like puppets and we could tell them: be positive. And they would go “oh yeah I never thought of that- I am going to be positive from now on”.
What people do is what makes sense to them and what makes sense to them is how they see the world. And how they see the world varies tremendously from person to person.
Have you noticed that even though we all live in the same world, we see a completely different reality? Even within a corporation of people with similar positions, some peoples love it and some people hate it. Some people see an opportunity, some challenge. Some people see problems, some people see solutions. Isn’t that interesting to consider how different we all are?
Why we are all so different in the “same” world is that our behaviors and actions- the things we do in the outside world- are influenced from a world we don’t see.. – our thoughts – the inside.
The inside is the source for all our behaviors on the outside. So, where does it look to you a logical place to start when you want to create some change? If you go on the outside-just in the behavior- chances are you won’t see much lasting change. And if you do see changes – it would be rather mechanical.
And that’s why many people say.. great leaders are born not developed or people don’t change.
As a contrary view to that, in my experience as a coach, I have seen that leaders can be developed and yes people do change but only when you start from the inside-out. When something in you shifts the way you see the world and then you can observe a transformation you could not think it was possible and it actually looks effortless.
And that’s why when a leadership program has worked in the past and has influenced someone to become a better leader,
is when they have understood something on a deeper level. When they have seen something new about other people, communication, team dynamics, motivation, it will inevitably change how they operate in their work and as leaders.
When the focus is not in the behavior- what the person does :
“ok I am going to be a better listener because that’s what they told us to do”
but when the person understands something deeper about were great listening is coming from.
And that is how life in general works. People don’t pick up what we do but where we are coming from. That’s why you could see two leaders having a similar style and doing similar things and one having a great effect and the others don’t. What we don’t see with our own eyes but it is affecting us 100% is that place that great leaders are coming from. This place is not something to mimic but something -as I said before- you need to understand.
So, in a series of blogposts, I am going to explore some ways we can see deeper about where great leaders are coming from and hopefully it will create a shift in our understanding and ability to lead.
with love,
I, Sofia
