Thanks for your comment. Depending on what you mean by “acting like a leader” – I’m not sure that it is a bad thing for schools to teach leadership skills. For instance, it is good if everyone in the organization thinks of the good of the company regardless of their particular role – what benefits the organization as a whole and how do we work together to achive the goals of the organization – again, thinking of how your particular role fits in the organization to ensure the success of the organization. Everyone in the organization should understand the short- and long-term goals of the organization. You could label that as “leadership.” I do believe that everyone can “act” like a leader in some way. However, maybe we don’t expect everyone to know how to create a strategic plan or set a strategic vision for the organization.

Individuals who are leaders can easily get people to follow them – you don’t have to be born a leader. It is your enthusiasm, your ability to set a vision for others that they can understand, and rolling up your sleeves to pitch in to get the job done rather than just throwing out orders that makes you a leader. Leaders can easily describe what everyone’s role is and how their role is needed to support the organization – to help individuals see their value within the organization.

I have seen groups as you have described – where everyone wants to lead and there is no real “team” working together toward a goal. Frankly, I have found in most all those cases that the issue is the team has no real leadership – no one who can effectively guide and facilitate the team and ensure consensus and cooperation. There may be an assigned “leader” – but maybe not someone who can demonstrate true leadership skills to make the group feel comfortable following them.

Thanks for your comment! You have certainly provided food for thought!

Best regards,
Gina

Also, I know that leadership skills are taught in school these days. However, how many people really can be leaders? If the goal is just to be able to recognize a leader, then fine. But when everyone is told they “must” act like a leader, what message does that send to those who simply cannot?

It brings up the old cliche: Too many chiefs and not enough Indians. I think “follower” skills need to be taught as well. Not to blindly follow, but to develop the mindset of someone skilled in carrying out reasonable instructions and work, maybe with less supervision than before. They would need to learn to recognize when those instructions were not reasonable and challenge them intelligently and effectively. But when everyone thinks they are supposed to lead we often get an organization that is paralyzed because everyone has their own idea of how to proceed and is intent on having their instructions implemented over others. If their idea was not followed, instead of saying OK, your way makes sense too and I can do it that way, they begin to stir the pot and cause a negative work environment because all they can do is complain that their way was better and would bring it up every time the favored idea developed a problem.

Has anyone else experienced being in a group with everyone thinking that their idea should be used and being poor followers if it is not? People who spend more time talking about how much better things would be if it had gone their way and second guessing or taking pleasure in apparent failures of the idea that came to be used?

http://blog.threestarleadership.com/2009/08/26/82609-midweek-look-at-the-independent-business-blogs.aspx

Wally Bock

Thanks much for your comment. I have used these examples – and a few others – to have discussions with clients around such topics about promotions. Especially when there is some hesitancy around the promotion or lack of consensus.

Many times if an employee is just not suited for a management role – or frankly not interested – there are so many ways to keep that employee engaged. I have found that sometimes clients are worried about losing a good employee to the competition and promote to keep them in the company. This rarely works.

Again – thanks for your comment and for reading!

Best regards,
Gina

First, great to hear from you! Hope you are well!

You have definitely made some excellent, valid points! I didn’t mean to imply that just because you are successful in a previous role that it doesn’t count – just that it doesn’t mean you don’t need further development and the organization doesn’t have to invest in you. It must for continued success in the new role.

Too frequently it takes a significant amount of work to justify the development program – esp one that includes continued support and mentoring – and get the appropriate monies allocated for it. I have been successful doing business impact and ROI studies based on pilot groups and therefore getting the additional monies to continue the program providing it shows a positive business impact. It isn’t easy though!

Thank you again!

Best,
Gina

- And still so many do. I have met people, not saying that they are the best, but saying that they are good enough… That is scary!

Great comment – thank you! Completely agree that to be a good leader you must work at it every day. I don’t believe there comes a point where you say – “well…I’ve done it all….now I’m the best and never need to work at it again.” There is always a new challenge in front of you and let’s face it, people who will challenge you in general! I love your point about not picking leaders based on what they have done in the past! Excellent point here. Obviously you might see the past as an indication of the type of person they are; but just because they succeed at a current job absolutely does not mean they can succeed as a leader.

Thanks again for your comment – a wonderful addition to this post!

Best regards,
Gina

I believe that to become a leader you must want to be one for the right reasons. You must want to make other people grow, you must want to make results and you must want to practice.

You can say you want to become a leader, you might say you want to run in the olympics, if you do not practice you will fail at both.

I like to compare with soccer. A good soccer team practice five to ten times a week, and play once. A great company play five days a week and practice ??? twice a year?

You can spot leadership potential by talking with them about who they admire. But you need to ask why they admire, and then find the skill or quality that repeats itself. In that way you will know who can be coached to become a leader by the qualities they admire and their ambitions.

And stop picking leaders based on what they have done in the past… Yeez is it so hard to see that they will not be doing that in the future if they become leaders? It holds no relevance. You must find people that can deal with the task they are set to do in the future.

And when it comes to my natural authority I suddenly stumbled upon it as I was providing feedback to a new employee that almost had a nervous breakdown. I had never experienced people being scared of talking to me. I had respect and I needed to change my way to not scare of the rest also. I practice leadership everyday and that is why I could one day feel that I had respect and natural authority. It was a strange discovery for a person that was not born a leader.