Born Versus Made Revisited

 

Last week I traveled to

San Diego CA to listen to a talk by Jim Kouzes. He and Barry Posner are the authors of the book The Leadership Challenge. This book is in my top five leadership books and will not soon be dislodged because it is the most comprehensive leadership development book available. All the others in my top five appeal to me for numerous versions, but none are as complete as this.

 

During his presentation Jim waged in on the age old leadership development debate of born versus made. Clearly this was a home town audience; a crowd full of leadership development zealots. I have never heard it put as well as he did this afternoon. His arguement made me chuckle at the thought of updating the argument on this topic on this blog.

 

Leadership development is hard work. It demands sacrifice. It demands that the leader have the best interests of the institution as their priority rather than their own. However, when someone claims that leadership is a born condition or genetic endowment, this implies that working at it is relatively pointless since you either have it or you don’t. By extension those who believe that leadership is solely a born condition must be inherently lazy. After all there is no value in developing it so why bother…

 

So is leadership made or are you Lazy!?

 

What a deliciously provocative question!

Lead well

Ron