Leadership: Innate Or Taught?

The debate on whether leadership is innate or taught seems never-ending. The source of the debate is simple to identify: organizations want to identify leaders.

A look at the academic research offers support for just about every perspective... but few definitive answers. The main theme in current leadership research can best be expressed as a metaphor: flowers are grown, but not without a seed. Understanding the contents of that seed, and the best methods for helping it to grow, continues to drive the research.

The source of the debate is simple to identify: organizations want to identify leaders. Today's organizations struggle to identify potential leaders within their ranks and discover them earlier in their career. 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 programs and/or development of high potentials. And, the pressure is considerable for this often considerable investment to produce bottom-line results.

A common mistake is to confuse management with leadership. At its most basic, leadership means to lead the way. What does that really mean? Many define that as knowing the way and getting people to follow. Underneath these two basic aspects of leadership are activities. As in John Kotter's classic 2001 Harvard Business Review article "What Leaders Really Do," leadership activities involve "setting a direction," "aligning people" and "motivating and inspiring." Underlying these activities are skills.

Are some leadership skills innate? Yes. Almost everyone has met at least one person whom 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. Kotter defines "setting a direction" as "developing a vision of the future (often the distant future) along with strategies for producing the changes needed to achieve that vision." According to Kotter's article, "broad-based strategic thinkers who are willing to take risks" are people who have vision. There are no leaders without vision, but there are people with vision who are not leaders.

That 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 the innate so that you know 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 on 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 on-going 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 them. It's a simple question that can save a lot of money as some employees may not aspire to leadership roles.

Rana Rosen, Capital H Group. Capital H Group is a consulting firm that takes a value-based approach to helping companies manage, and invest in, their human capital. Partnering with our clients, we focus on creating value through their people. For further information, please visit their web site: www.capitalHgroup.com.
First published: 7 February 2005.
Last updated: 6 October 2005.