Photo by plagal

There has been a debate for years about what makes a great leader. This debate is usually summarized into two schools of thought. The one school proposes that leaders are a select few people who are born with the unique set of skill and have rare leadership abilities. The other school of thought proposes that leaders are made, that is they learn, grow and develop into great leaders through the books they read, the people they associate with and from their experiences.

My take on this discussion is that I believe that leaders are made, and I am not the only one with this belief.

“…leaders are made, not born, and made more by themselves than by any external means. Second . . . that no leader sets out to be a leader per se, but rather to express himself freely and fully.” – Warren Bennis, On Becoming a Leader

The truth is the most people have the potential to become effective leaders. The real  issue is that leadership takes time to develop…

• People need time to figure out what they’re passionate about
• People need time to understand their personal vision and purpose
• People need time to learn how to express who they
• People need time to learn how to use their unique strengths and skills
• People need time to learn how to express their purpose in their own unique way.

As the saying goes…. the fighter does not win in the ring…  he is only recognised there! You see leadership is not something you’re born with, it cannot be taught, it cannot be copied…  it’s learnt!

“Leadership cannot really be taught. It can only be learned.” – Harold Geneen

Leaders learn through life experience, by making room in our lives for lots of trial and error…

“Leaders aren’t born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that’s the price we’ll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal.” – Vince Lombardi

Leaders are made when they understanding their purpose, their strengths and have a deep passion to make a difference by living out who they are in the real world.

“Leadership is an observable, learnable set of practices. Leadership is not something mystical and ethereal that cannot be understood by ordinary people. Given the opportunity for feedback and practice, those with the desire and persistence to lead can substantially improve their abilities to do so.” – James Kouzes and Barry Posner, The Leadership Challenge

Perhaps this real issue is that…

• … only a few of us pay the price necessary to become a leader?
• … only a few people take the time to understand their unique vision and purpose?
• … only a few people take the time to understand who they are?
• … only a few people take the time to learn how to express themselves?

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2. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
3. How Leaders Make The Most Of Their Experiences

“Leaders like everyone else, are the sum of all their experiences, but, unlike others, they amount to more than the sum, because they make more of their experiences.” – Warren Bennis, Why Leaders Can’t Lead

Leaders are continual learners and effective leaders ensure they make the most of their life experiences. It’s important then you understand how to extract the maximum value from what you learn from your experiences as you journey through life. Here are some of what I have learnt about the importance of learning from what life throws at you…

1. Accomplished leaders learn best from experiences: The Leading Blog has a post, “What Is Your Plan For Personal Growth?“’ discussing the importance of having a plan to grow, as discussed in the book “Crucibles of Leadership” by Robert Thomas. Thomas writes that crucibles “are like trials or tests that corner individuals and force them to answer questions about who they are and what is really important to them.” The best learning comes from these types of personal experiences that have been reflected upon and understood.

“Accomplished leaders say that experience is their best teacher. They learned their most meaningful and important leadership lessons — lessons that they’ve integrated into their own leadership style—through crucibles. These were critical events and experiences, times of testing and trial, failure more often than grand success, that grabbed them by the lapels and demanded to know ‘What do you stand for?’ and ‘What are you going to do?’ A situation arose that did not respect age, gender, generation, nationality, talent, or charisma; all it asked was that the person step up and be someone or do something they’d never been or done before.”

2. Learning from Experience is not an automatic process: Learning from experience is important for effective leadership. However, learning from experience, does not just happen. It’s surprising how few people take the time to reflect on and learn from their experiences. Learning is not an automatic process and people do not automatically learn from their experiences.

Unless we take the time to engage in reflection, we will end up repeating our mistakes, unable to extract learning from our experiences.

Whenever we take a break and review, analyze and evaluate our experience of new information, with the goal of increasing our understanding, we are busy reflecting. It’s through this process of reflection, that our life experiences are transformed into learning and deeper self-understanding.

3. We learn from life’s experiences through the process of reflection: Reflection is triggered by events in our life’s and especially crucibles. Reflection is the process of mulling personal experiences over and over in our mind. During this process we’re asking ourselves a number of probing questions, examining our experience from different perspectives and making connections with previous experiences.

As we reflect on the events and circumstances in our lives, we seek to understand our behaviours, looking for what caused us to react and behave the way we did. The goal of this introspection is to gain a deeper self-awareness and understanding. We learn best from life’s experience when we have a chance to think about our behaviours and it’s underlying causes. Through the process of reflection, we become an observer of own own thinking and actions.

“We should be careful to get out of an experience all the wisdom that is in it – not like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again – and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.” – Mark Twain

The process of reflection is initiated by thinking and questioning our feelings, behaviours and actions. This allows us to gain an understanding of why we’re getting the results we are and what we need to do differently, to improve and create better results.

It’s a common belief that we we all learn from experience, this is partially true, learning from experience is not an automatic process. We don’t learn just because we have an experience. We learn best from evaluated experience. Learning occurs through the deliberate process of reflection. After all you’ll always be more convinced by what you have personally discovered than by what others have found.

4. Schedule time for reflection: We learn when we take the time required to reflect on our experiences. We make on of the biggest mistakes if we think that learning from life’s experience is going to happen automatically. You don’t own your experience until you understand them.

5. Slow down: We deceive ourselves if we think that by doing things faster that we will be more productive. Slow down and take time to think and reflect on your experiences.

6. Take responsibility: By taking responsibility for what’s happening in our lives we move from being the victim to the owner and author of our lives. We must take responsibility for the results we are getting in our lives. Blame nobody. As soon as we blame we become the victim and justify our actions. Start by asking yourself, “What choices or decisions could I have made differently?”, “How have I interpreted these events?” and “Has my interpretation on these events contributed to this situation?”

“Experience is not what happens to you but it is what you make of what happens to you.” – Aldous Huxley

Reflect on the following:

• Are you slowing down enough to think about your daily experiences?
• Have you set aside time to think and reflect on your experiences?
• Do you make it a habit to learn from your experiences?
• What surprised, angered or made you happy this week? Why?

Related posts:

1. Seeking Powerful Leadership Experiences
2. Transformations and Powerful Leadership Experiences
3. Observations on how we learn…

Photo by Design By Zouny

Leadership development is about personal development and the experiences we have on our life’s journey creates the necessary personal capacity required to lead. Consider the biography of the life of Winston Churchill, “Winston Spencer Churchill: The Last Lion, Visions of Glory” describes Churchill as:

“Sickly, an uncoordinated weakling with the pale fragile hands of a girl, speaking with a lisp and a slight stutter, he had been at the mercy of bullies. They beat him, ridiculed him, and pelted him with cricket balls. Trembling and humiliated, he hid in a nearby woods. This was hardly the stuff of which gladiators are made.”

Similarly, Peter Senge in his book “The Fifth Discipline” made the following observation of leaders:

“Most of the outstanding leaders I’ve worked with are neither tall nor especially handsome; they are often mediocre public speakers; they do not stand out in a crowd; they do not mesmerize an attending audience with there brilliance or eloquence. Rather, what distinguishes them is their clarity and persuasiveness of their ideas, the depth of their commitment, and their openness to continually learning more”

It seems to me that life’s experiences and our response to them are key to, how leaders are formed, and the kind of leaders they become. The experiences that shape us as leaders, as we journey through life are referred to as passages by David Dotlich in the Ivey Business Journal article, “Adversity: What Make a Leader the Most” describing life’s adverse and diverse experiences as passages because:

“they take you from one place to another. You see the world and yourself differently after you’ve gone through the events and emotional states that define each passage…these passages are emotionally and cognitively intense….as a result your sense of self changes in a fundamental way. Who you are, what you’re capable of doing and your place in the world will all shift”

These adverse and diverse passages are effectively illustrated by David using the following matrix:

The power of experiences to shape a leader’s life is huge, in fact experiences are so powerful they can have the opposite effect, just as experiences can make us stronger they can also paralyse us, causing us to cower and retreat from life. Fearful of having another similar experience, we rather play it safe, not venturing out, not taking risks, seeking the safety of “positional leadership”. The key is in how we respond to our life passages.

The result is that we have two types of leaders:

• Leaders who responded poorly to life’s passages, they developed negative or faulty worldviews and lead out of fear, abusing their power, controlling others and seeking position as a means to exert influence.
• Leaders who responded to life’s passages from a learning stance, looking for the opportunity and lessons to be learned, remaining open and vulnerable. They lead authentically, not from pride, exerting influence through relationships and personal character and commitment (as described by Peter Senge above)

This is described by Warren Bennis in “On Becoming a Leader” stating that:

“Until you make your life your own, you’re walking in borrowed clothes. Leaders, whatever their field, are made up as much of their experiences as their skills, like everyone else. Unlike everyone else, they use their experiences rather than being used by it.”

As mentioned in a previous post, “If you honestly evaluate your “leadership career”, do you have ten years of leadership experience…….or do you have a one year leadership experience repeated ten times?.” To develop, leaders need to seek experiences that will create a shift in their worldview, either through changes in career, industry, travel or exposure to other cultures. Whilst seeking diverse experiences leaders should simultaneously, strive to ensure a positive response and always looking for opportunities to learn and grow though the experience.

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1. What’s the State of Your Leadership Practice?

A Fortune article “Catch a Rising Star” looks at rising top talent within large corporates. The following quote from the article really hit home for me the importance of talent in this new economy:

“Gates once said that if you took the 20 smartest people out of Microsoft, it would be an insignificant company. Imagine. The world’s software colossus reduced to insignificance by the loss of just 20 people. It’s suddenly easier to see why the company went ballistic over the loss of just one.”

One of the greatest skills required, according to the article is the need for “effective managers”, especially in the higher up in organisational structures. Tom Neff a headhunter from SpencerStuart a top CEO recruiter mentions the following requirements of organisations of their top managers:

Companies don’t want dictators, kings, or emperors.” Instead of someone who gives orders, they want someone who asks probing questions that force the team to think and find the right answers……a new survey from Right Management Consultants…….. finds that the No. 1 skill companies seek in managers is “ability to motivate and engage others.”…….. Ranking a close second is ability to communicate…….. Standout leaders should additionally have on-the-ground operating experience outside the U.S.…..and they’ll need megawatts of energy to meet the demands of global travel and a 24/7 world.

So how is leadership development attempting to meet the need?

How many people with those qualities are you likely to find if you just go out looking? The depressing answer–not many–is why many companies are getting serious about growing their own leaders. In a world where top managers can cost as much as top shortstops, a baseball analogy is apt: Companies want to find their future stars in their own farm systems rather than have to buy them from competing teams. Trouble is, most companies aren’t very good at leadership development………..77% of companies say they don’t have enough successors to their current senior managers. Yet they have a miserable time doing much about it………..

Where do we look to find the most powerful leadership experiences?

Steven Kerr, another GE alum who now oversees leadership development at Goldman Sachs, suggests a simple exercise: “Ask your company’s best leaders to name the most powerful learning experiences they’ve had.” They will hardly ever mention a class and will almost always name a real-life experience in business. The challenge is to find ways to replicate those experiences.

I found this short article insightful, it really grabbed my attention. With the proliferation of leadership theories, knowledge and training, it’s still the practice of leadership that really makes the leader……….. what’s the state of your leadership practice?

Are you having powerful leadership experiences?

Leadership experiences and one of the most important tools for leadership development. Are you consciously seeking out leadership experiences. Leadership experiences, are those that take you out your comfort zone, out of your everyday routine and cause you to embrace some risk. If you honestly evaluate your “leadership career”, do you have ten years of leadership experience…….or do you have a one year leadership experience repeated ten times?

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