Myth: Everyone Can Be a Leader
Propagating this lie is extremely harmful
It is shockingly difficult to be a leader! Yet simultaneously disturbing to see the bar constantly being sunk to accommodate the lowest common denominator.
If I were to ask you how many leaders you have been fortunate to encounter over the course of your life, like me, that number can probably be counted on one hand. This is because leaders are a rare species. They are not created simply by declaration or manifested by mere desire.
Now, it’s important to distinguish the definition used here as different from a tag or title given by mere conferral or position. I am referring more to an earned status — a visible and ostensible public recognition gained through years of personal effort and sacrifice.
Sacrifice is a key part of leadership — not to be undervalued.
Leaders are born with enough of the natural proclivities to develop into mature role models — some call this talent. Following this, a number of years of refinement and training is necessary to realise full potential.
Why the Dearth of Leadership?
In-congruent Beliefs
In the same way that awarding participation trophies-for-all kills initiative and devalues talent — the fallacy of universal leadership ability is terribly toxic.
A couple of disclaimers here to avoid confusion — yes, we all can and should be personal leaders and yes, we should be willing to step into finite leadership positions where we are deemed to be best qualified.
However the aim to nurture inspirational and world-changing leadership — which is sorely needed in these times — should not be sacrificed on the altar of maintaining homogeneity.
In similar vein, the belief that everyone has equal and equivalent propensity for leadership potential is false and ultimately does major harm to society.
Management versus Leadership
“Management consists of controlling a group or a set of entities to accomplish a goal.
Leadership refers to an individual’s ability to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute toward organisational success. Influence and inspiration separate leaders from managers, not power and control”
-Harvard Business Review
I have spent the last fourteen years of my life working in corporate settings on three different continents across the world — Africa, Europe, North America. In that time I have made the following observations of the leadership pipelines for big business — I call it the least-effort trajectory:
- High performers become managers
- All managers are expected to be automatic leaders — in spite often having zero people skills and no training
Why is this a problem?
At its core leadership is about people. Unless you are supervising robots or disembodied beings, technical skill or a high IQ does not automatically translate into good leadership.
Likewise skill in managing a process or technical work-scope does not spontaneously generate the high EQ needed for effective people management.
Managers are great with assigning tasks and supervising towards completion. Leaders focus on consensus building and inspiring people towards a goal. The better we understand the distinctions, the sooner we can maximise the role of each.
The “accepted” face of leadership
Diversity & Inclusion has been a global buzz word for the last decade. With little tangible results to show for all the focused attention.
It’s past time to stop skirting around the root causes of how the problem was created in the first place.
Let’s blow the roof off this echo chamber of reinforcing bigoted views shall we?
The way we end up with endless combinations of all male, pale and stale leadership — boards of directors, expert panels, event speakers — is by accepting this stereotype as a valid template of the ideal.
Only 50% of the world is male but closer to 90% of all leadership roles are occupied by men.
The reason for this is not down to any inherent genetic traits that make men better leaders — research has in fact shown the opposite to be true.
“If women ran every country in the world there would be a general improvement in living standards and outcomes”
-Barrack Obama
By picking the majority of our leaders from this narrow sample set of the population, we are left to grapple with the three-fold consequences of our error:
- We lose out on the immense potential of women leadership
- We are left to deal with the fall-out from elevating men into roles they are not suited for
- We rob ourselves and ‘misplaced’ leaders of contributing within their correct areas of genius
What Makes A Leader?
Leadership is not magnetic personality — that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not “making friends and influencing people” — that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to high sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.
-Peter Drucker
Nature
Jungian psychology has run the full gamut of peer review and corroboration to produce the modern accepted belief in the fixed nature of individual personality.
Just as there are some body types that are better inclined to the sport of basketball. Some mental predispositions have an easier time at grasping mathematical and physics concepts.
In the same way, certain personality types lend themselves more readily to leadership potential.
Understanding this very important fact means we can begin to identify and train the best people to lead.
It becomes less about who has the look or talks the talk or struts like a peacock.
We can focus on more relevant primary metrics for raw capacity and potential. However as with every important role in life, talent is only a part of the story.
Nurture
Training is paramount to guarantee that our leaders emerge with the best available skills and knowledge.
In ancient societies, future emperors, kings and chiefs were often sent out to train in the palace of an ally kingdom — or given a thorough internal indoctrination — to prepare them for the immense demands of their eventual roles.
This rigorous preparation should be no different in modern times. The importance of the output required should inform the resources we are willing to offer towards the development of our leaders.
Leadership is sacrificial. It is a life lived predominantly in service to others. We should hold our leaders to a higher standard and they should in turn deliver on these expectations.
We look to leaders to provide inspiration and spur trans-formative action. These are not the minor leagues.
There are dire consequences for large swaths of humanity when global leadership fails. This why it remains a reserved arena for the few who are dedicated enough make the requisite surrendering of self.
Perhaps the single biggest determinant for a person worthy of leadership is the willingness to sacrifice.
Many have the potential to be the type of leader any one would proudly follow. Even fewer have the staying power to do what is takes to get there.
In the final analysis, we need to stop dictating who looks the part and instead provide suitably broad incentive and opportunities for only the best by nature and nurture to rise to the top.
A society gets the leadership that it works for — or does not as the case may be.