I’ve got a question for you.

Do you think being a leader is innate or a learned skill?

I had an interesting discussion recently with a new client on this very topic.

He confidently told me that being a leader is innate. You are born with it.

I could feel my eyebrows lift.

He expanded on his reasons why this was so.

During his career, he had often been promoted to leadership and management roles.

He had had no formal training and had performed well.

“Well, I think we’re going to disagree on this”, I said.

“I teach leadership skills.”

“Oh”, he replied.

“If you think about what you told me about how you were promoted, much of it was because you solved problems. You didn’t wait to be asked. You just got in and did it.”

He agreed.

Leaders are problem solvers.

And I agree, some people do this naturally, but that doesn’t mean that people can’t learn to become leaders or improve their leadership skills.

It comes back to The 4 Stages of Learning. We don’t know what we don’t know (Consciously Incompetent).

If you’ve never had the opportunity to solve problems or you didn’t know that that was one of the criteria for leadership, how could you demonstrate leadership skills?

Once you do become of aware of it, you can now start solving problems.

No-one is fighting you for the leadership role.

We all want leaders.

We want people to take charge; to make us feel safe; to take responsibility; to hold us accountable.

In our Leadership experiences, we have a particular activity that demonstrates this very well. During this activity the group of individuals become a team.

Someone steps up as leader and often it’s the person who doesn’t see themselves as a natural leader. It’s the person who has little confidence in their ability to lead.

As we debrief the activity, they are genuinely surprised (and a bit proud) of what they achieved. This one activity helps them transform their identity to accept that they are indeed, a leader.

Leaders behave differently to followers.

Leaders can learn communication skills. How to say things so that they land well for the listener.

Leaders can learn to understand their people better.

Would you consider yourself to be a leader?

Are you a problem solver?

If you’d like to know more, check out some of the skills that are included in our Leadership Fundamentals experience. Conduct a little audit for yourself. Click here to find out.

If you celebrate Easter, I wish you a very happy Easter. If not, happy holidays.

P. S. Invite your friends to get the Weekly Thoughts delivered directly to their inbox. Go to https://shirleydalton.com/weekly-thoughts.

P.P.S. Our next LIVE online Leadership Fundamentals experience starts Tuesday 14^th May, 2024. Click here for more information. Early Bird promotion where you pay for Silver and receive Gold finishes on Sunday 14^th April, 2024 so be quick.