"The ultimate competitive advantage of your enterprise comes down to a single imperative – your ability to grow leaders faster than your competition. The more quickly you can get every single person in the company demonstrating leadership behaviour – regardless of their position – the more quickly you will lead the field. Your race is to grow leaders fast and develop a "culture of leadership" before your competition does."
Robin Sharma, The Greatness Guide.
But can you grow leaders? Can good and effective leadership be learned or is it something you are born with?
We say good leadership can be learned. Here's why.
The Myth of Leadership DNA
A popular misconception is that effective leaders must possess some special leadership DNA. This view has come about because the leaders that easily spring to mind are those that have brought about some type of heroic change. The Ghandis, the Churchills, the Nightingales, the Martin Luther Kings of the world. In business, the leaders that easily come to mind are those that actively court publicity and notoriety – the Lee Iacoccas, the Jack Welchs, the Donald Trumps of the world. Effective leadership therefore becomes associated with having a high profile and charismatic personality.
While the world occasionally needs heroic leaders, 99% of leadership isn't about heroic acts carried out in the public eye. The leadership that keeps the world and business moving is carried out by ordinary people removed from the public spotlight. These people have no special leadership chromosome.
As Jim Collins, in his book Good to Great describes, the primary characteristics of leaders behind great companies are those of humility and determination. Very different from the bold and larger than life personalities you might have expected to be at the helm of these organisations.
Catapult's experience in working with leaders over the last decade is similar. In fact many are so backward in coming forward that you have to drag their leadership achievements out of them! Ordinary people quietly doing extraordinary things.
Once the myth of "leadership DNA" is exposed it has a truly liberating effect for people. It opens up the possibility that they can be leaders.
Learning effective Leadership Skills
With the possibility of leadership now real for people, there are key leadership skills to be learnt. In Catapult Leadership we categorise these into heart, head, and hand leadership skills.
The Heart of Good Leadership
The heart of good leadership is all about having high self awareness and emotional intelligence. In other words, knowing your strengths and weaknesses and having the ability to recognise the emotional needs of others. While some people are naturally gifted with high self awareness and emotional intelligence, these attributes can also be learnt and developed.
These skills can be developed through exposure to tools such as the DISC Behavioural Styles framework. Such tools give leaders insights into their preferred behavioural styles and personality traits. Once aware of their styles and their associated strengths and weaknesses leaders can adapt their styles to build on their strengths and mitigate their weaknesses.
Leaders high in emotional intelligence are adept at picking up on other people's behavioural and emotional clues. They use these clues to discern other people's emotional moods and needs and respond appropriately. Conversely, leaders with low emotional intelligence do not read these invisible clues. They risk running roughshod over others, blissfully unaware of the negative impact they can have.
The Head of Good Leadership
To be effective, leaders must also intellectually know how to do things. This is the head of leadership. Effective leaders are in the business of future proofing their team or organisation. This requires that leaders must know how to be forward looking and how to think strategically. They must look beyond the here and now to see where the team or organisation needs to go if it is to remain relevant to customers and stakeholders. Leaders must also provide, or at least facilitate, the strategic thinking that will guide the team or organisation to this new future.
The Hand of Good Leadership
Effective leaders must also handle getting things done. For example, being a proficient strategic thinker is not enough. Leaders must make sure strategy is implemented. Many leaders fall short at this hurdle. It is as if they believe the process of doing the thinking is enough and that the strategy will magically implement itself. Or leaders get consumed back into the day to day business and the strategy gathers dust on the shelf.
The hand of good leadership also speaks to a leader's ability to delegate. motivate and coach people. Leaders must also be able to handle having challenging conversations and they must make timely and effective decisions.
Catapult Leadership
Catapult Leadership provides participants with key insights and skills in the heart, head and hand leadership domains. To reinforce the learning participants create a leadership project to implement back in the workplace and receive a follow up one-on-one coaching session with Catapult's senior executive coach.
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