Leadership ability--you either have it or you don't

The following article discusses whether nature versus nuture in terms of leadership.

"Leadership ability--you either have it or you don't". Harvard Management Update, Apr2007, Vol. 12 Issue 4, p3-4, 2p;

MYTHS ABOUT LEADERSHIP
abound, says Marty Linsky.
One of the most pernicious is the
notion that the ability to lead is a
mysterious power only the lucky few
possess. In this interview, Linsky, a
cofounder of the consultancy Cambridge
Leadership Associates and an
adjunct lecturer at Harvard’s John F.
Kennedy School of Government,
explains what is so wrong about this
myth and details the steps that anyone—
at any level in an organization—
can take to become more
effective at exercising leadership.
—Christina Bielaszka-DuVernay,
Editor
CBD: What makes this particular piece
of conventional wisdom about leadership
so dangerous?
ML:For one thing, it prevents those who
exercise leadership from being the best
they could be. People who believe most
fervently that leadership is an inborn
gift invariably think that they themselves
possess it. Such overweening selfconfidence
leaves little room for
self-doubt or self-reflection. But to be
effective at leadership, people must
step outside themselves to critique
their own decisions and actions.
For another thing, it prevents many
other people from even trying to fulfill
their leadership potential. If an individual
doesn’t believe that he has leadership
ability—even when he has
demonstrated that ability to others—he
will not take on larger leadership challenges.
And his organization will not
benefit from his greater contributions.
In both cases, it’s a very self-limiting
myth.
CBD:So if leadership isn’t an inborn
quality, then what is it?
ML:Leadership is about skills and attitudes
and behaviors, all of which can be
learned. Even the much-vaunted
charisma can be learned. Look at acting
lessons.What are they but a way to
train someone to connect one-on-one
with everyone in an audience, to reach
into each person’s heart—in short, to
be charismatic? So the idea that
charisma can’t be taught or learned
doesn’t stand up.
Every essential leadership skill can
be taught and learned.
CBD:In your experience, what are the
most critical leadership skills, and how
can people develop them?
ML:I’d start with adaptability.There’s a
lot of talk about leadership requiring
vision, but a too-strong vision can pose
a problem. People who are passionate
about a vision and overly committed to
it tend to be inflexible and unable to
adapt to changing circumstances.
Adaptability and flexibility are more
critical to effective leadership than
vision. People who excel at leadership
balance realism with optimism.They
can turn a keen, analytic eye to reality
yet remain positive and hopeful. And
then when circumstances change, they
can recognize this and accommodate it.
A related capability is a tolerance for
uncertainty and conflict. Exercising
leadership can be anxiety-producing;it
requires bearing up in the face of ambiguity
and chaos.To build up your tolerance,
practice holding steady in the face
of circumstances that make you feel
uncomfortable. For example, we once
worked with a CEO who spent months
learning to tolerate conflict among his
top team. In the past, to avoid such conflict,
he’d take the work off their shoulders
and decide issues for them. He had
to continually remind himself that the
conflictwas a necessary part of letting
them work through difficult issues on
their own.
CBD:What other skills are essential to
effective leadership?
ML:Relationship skills, as opposed to
specific professional expertise.Many
people move up the organizational
hierarchy because they’ve been really
terrific at bringing their particular area
of expertise to bear on business situations.
Then, when they accede to senior
roles, they can stumble because they try
to apply this same professional expertise
to a problem that really requires
emotional intelligence and savvy
people skills.
I once worked with the CFO of a
major global company. Although he
was part of the top team, he thought
of himself as a technical expertwhose
role was to provide specific expertise,
period. So, for instance, when discussions
ranged beyond financials—as
they often did—he didn’t jump into
the discussion and engage with his
peers.
We worked to help him build up
both the tactical skills and the courage
to take a more robust role in the top
team meetings. He started off by run-
Conventional Wisdom
with Marty Linsky, Cofounder, Cambridge Leadership Associates
“Leadership ability—you either
have it or you don’t”
Leadership is about
skills and attitudes and
behaviors, all of which
can be learned.
Leadership Ability (continued)
4 harvard management update April 2007
ning low-risk experiments such as commenting
on issues on the fringe of his
CFO responsibilities but beyond his
apparent technical expertise. He’d plan
his interventions in advance, then we’d
debrief afterward. Slowly, but steadily,
he began to be more comfortable operating
outside his narrow expertise. His
subordinates started looking to him for
mentoring and advice about their own
leadership skills and professional
growth. And his colleagues on the top
team began to value his judgment on a
wide range of issues. He also took on
assignments that were outside his
bailiwick.
Leadership is about both will and
skill.This CFO had the core skills in place,
but because he didn’t recognize this, he
held back. In fact,we find that people
are prevented from being effective leaders
as much by psychological constraints
as by an absence of actual skills.
CBD:How can people cultivate the
relationship skills that lie at the heart
of good leadership?
ML:It is about designing and running
low-risk experiments. These could
include talking to selected colleagues in
advance and taking their temperatures
before raising a difficult issue at a
meeting.Then, during the meeting, it
might mean raising the issue as a question
and in the spirit of curiosity rather
than staking out a defined position.
It also requires nurturing the skill
we call Getting on the Balcony. In the
midst of an interaction you step mentally
away from it to take a distanced
view.The point is to look for patterns in
your own behavior and in the exchange
that are not visible from the dance
floor.
Leadership is an experimental art.
You can’t learn it from just reading a
book or taking a class any more than
you can learn to ride a bike by reading
instructions.You’ve got to experiment
and practice; you’ve got to learn it while
you’re doing it.
CBD:Anything else that’s an essential
element of the leadership toolbox?
ML:If I had to choose just one more
skill, I’d say it’s the ability to let others
take the reins. People in top jobs win
points from their subordinates for solving
their problems for them.That
dependency can be dangerously seductive—
solving problems for others can
too easily become part of your identity.
But if you define yourself thatway,
you’re not going to have any time for
higher-level work. And if you don’t ever
let your direct reports take the reins,
they won’t develop their own leadership
competencies.
Let me illustrate.We were hired by
the founder and CEO of a fast-growing
services company. Morale had become a
huge problem as the company had
grown.The CEO wasn’t having any
fun—he complained that he spent all
his time “hand holding”—and his top
people weren’t having fun either.The
CEO’s leadership skills hadn’t evolved at
pace with the company’s growth, and
everyone was suffering because of this.
So we concentrated on helping the
CEO alter his relationship with his top
team.We helped him to bring the rest of
his team squarely into the decisionmaking
process.We also encouraged
him to be less available for one-on-one
interactions so that both he and his
direct reports would have less opportunity
to fall back into the “hand holding”
behavior thatwas holding everyone
back.
As the CEO grew more confident in
his ability to step back and refuse to
solve others’problems, his top team
members’confidence also increased.
They assumed higher-level roles, leaving
the CEO with even more time and
energy to devote to his most important
task, setting the company’s direction.
Morale improved significantly.
And with the whole organization
functioning much more effectively and
efficiently, the bottom line improved, too.
CBD:If you had only three minutes in
which to coach someone on exercising
leadership more effectively, what
would you tell her?
ML:Leadership and purpose go hand in
hand. Leadership entails risk—that’s
why we don’t see more of it. So a critical
first step in becoming better at leadership
is to clarify your purpose.What are
you willing to take risks on behalf of?
Maybe you’ve decided that sacrificing
short-term success is necessary for
reaching longer-term goals. Or maybe
your purpose is to forge a unified culture
from the idiosyncratic, deeply
embedded cultures of two companies
that came together in a merger.Whatever
your purpose, you have to define it
clearly before you’ll be able to take risks
to make it a reality and before you’ll be
able to help others to do the same.
A second step would be to practice
Getting on the Balcony to assess your
own resources and constraints.What
advantages does your role give you?
What disadvantages? How are you
understood by the other players in the
system? What are your predictable
responses that enable others to undermine
your interventions? What behaviors
do you need to nurture to broaden
your tool kit?
With self-awareness, you can create
a plan of action.You can identify what
leadership skills you need to start practicing
and stretching.