Are People Born Leaders or is Leadership Taught?

Here's a question you have probably heard and maybe even asked many times yourself; "Are people born a leader or is leadership learned?" Well, after you finish this article, you will have your answer. Also, I am going to do something here on LinkedIn that I have not yet seen anyone else create, (I'm not saying they haven't, I am saying I haven't seen it), a 10 Day Leadership Challenge.

Leadership is a topic that I get excited about and something that has fascinated me for over 30 years. I went from the farm to the military, straight out of high school. In the military, I experienced some examples of great leadership and some very bad leadership. The problem was, a persons rank put people in leadership positions that had no leadership ability. This is where I first learned that a title or a position does not make you a leader.

As I went through my military career, we were offered several leadership courses. What I found so strange was that everyone in my career field and for some leadership courses, in the Air Force, went through the same leadership classes and yet there were so many differences in leadership ability outside the classroom. To me, as a young man observing this, I naturally assumed that meant you couldn't really teach leadership and people were either born a leader or they weren't. However, my initial assumption was wrong. It's just that the process for teaching leadership is broken, (More on this later).

People are born with certain traits that could help them to be a good leader; good looks, voice, height, and body type. However, that's where being born a leader ends. Everything else about leadership can be learned, experienced, or practiced.

Initially my theory that life experiences is where you gained leadership ability made sense to me. I was asked to lead teams and projects very early in my career and I assumed it was because growing up I played sports and was a pretty good athlete. I was the captain of some of some teams so I had been given the opportunity to lead and motivate people at a young age. When I spoke to my peers who also were also asked to lead teams or projects, I found they too had been put in leadership positions at a young age, almost always in sports.

For years, I attributed leadership ability with life experience especially throughout a persons youth. However, as I got older I met great leaders who didn't have those opportunities growing up. My theory was unravelling and I searched for a new understanding of why people failed or succeeded at leadership. Every day I saw examples of how leadership impacted teams and organizations in positive and negative ways but I couldn't define why.

That is until one day I had a conversation with my friend Victor Garcia. We met on a Saturday, notebooks and pens in hand with the intent to understand what makes a person a good leader. We started out the same way that seemingly all leadership books and classes do. We tried to define what good leaders do. Our notes were full of buzz words and cliche's like; they mentor, they coach, they delegate, they provide feedback, the use any number of tools that are taught for organization and project management, they inspire, they challenge people... the list went on. Everything we wrote down was no different than the books, videos, and courses we had already seen on leadership. We knew this process for teaching leadership was broken because it did not produce consistent results when people applied what they learned.

When you're stuck on a problem, you're only stuck because you're not asking the right questions and Victor and I were stuck. At least until we asked a better question. We wondered what gave people the ability to do all those things that a leader does. In other words, let's break leadership down to the fundamentals. In a moment, we went from stuck to not being able to write fast enough as the ideas flowed through us. When we were done, we realized it's not just what leaders do that makes the difference, it's who they are being that makes the difference. With that understanding, we created the acronym and the phrase that, Leadership is "PRACTICED". Anyone who understands this idea can work on their leadership ability. People are not born leaders and leadership isn't really taught. It's PRACTICED.

What does the acronym PRACTICED mean? I will give you the words here but if you are want to rally improve your leadership ability, then take the, "10 Day Leadership Challenge", where we will go over every one of these principles in detail and give you the opportunity to reflect, observe, and practice one principle a day for 10 days. Details on how to join are below. For now, let me reveal what we mean when we say leadership is PRACTICED.

• Positive attitude
• Respect
• Articulate
• Charisma
• Trust
• Imagination
• Confidence
• Energy
• Discipline

Understanding that leadership is not about what you're doing, it's about who you are being could potentially change your life. Stop trying to do things to be a better leader until you start understanding more about who you are being. The truth is, the person you are being is what is determining your leadership ability.

The 10 Day Leadership Challenge: I have created a brand new group here on LinkedIn called the "10 Day Leadership Challenge": https://www.dhirubhai.net/groups/9066510/ . The challenge will run from August 15 - 26. I know, that's 12 days. The challenge is on the 10 weekdays and the weekend is time for reflection. Every day, we will post a new video in the group based on the principle of the day from the acronym. I know, there's only 9 letters. The last day is a summary video and where you go from there.

We encourage you to interact in the group and comment on the videos. During the week I will be posting in the group about leadership and prepping you for the challenge. We originally talked about breaking leadership down to its fundamentals. Well, Victor and I can't do anything without making it fun so we call this the FUNdamentals of Leadership. We promise we will do all we can to make this a fun process.

You're going to learn why each of these principles is fundamental the who you are being as a leader and how they all work together. You can't have one or two of these principles mastered and have long term effectiveness as a leader. You must understand how all of them are either working for you or against you and your leadership abilities.

Request to join the 10 Day Leadership Challenge group: https://www.dhirubhai.net/groups/9066510/ if you would like to challenge yourself to be the best leader that you can be. We look forward to providing this challenge to all of you.

If you're getting value from this newsletter, share it with your network and friends. You never know who needs to hear the message of the week.

I care about all of you and I will demonstrate that through my actions.

Thank you,

George Wheeler