Stop wondering if effective leaders are born or made

Have you ever wondered, “are leaders born or made?” If so, you wouldn’t be alone! Here’s my answer: it’s both and. Here’s what I mean by that. Everyone is born and every effective leader is made. Being an effective leader is simply a person who has learned the skills of leadership and applies them consistently. Even if you believe leaders can be made, there are stereotypes about who can be an effective leader that hold many people back, maybe even you?

No one isborn an effective leader, or anything else for that matter. Did you know how towalk, talk, or read coming out of the womb? You didn’t? Funny, me either! But ifyou’re like me, you’re pretty effective at any of those today. In fact, you probablydon’t even think about them while doing them. That’s because walking, talkingand reading are skills that you’ve managed to figure out how to do effectively everyday.

Becoming aneffective leader simply involves learning leadership skills and using themconsistently in conjunction with your natural gifts, abilities, and a personalitythat makes you unique in every way.

Stereotypes

Unfortunately,societal stereotypes have led many of us to believe that in order to be a successfulleader you must be “a charismatic six-foot-tall whiteman with a degree from a top university, who is a strategic visionary with aseemingly direct-to-the-top career path and the ability to make perfectdecisions under pressure” (Harvard BusinessReview).

Effective Leadership Behaviors

A 10-yearstudy involving 17,000 CEOs was conducted by the Harvard Business Review (published in2017). The study revealed that there were four behaviors that were attributedto the success of CEOs. Each of these behaviors challenged the commonstereotypes of successful leaders. The four behaviors are:

1. Making decisions quickly and with conviction,
2. Meeting and exceeding customer’s needs by motivating their teams to serve customers with value-add,
3. Proactively adapting with the long-term perspective in mind, and
4. Being predictably reliable.

So effective leadership has nothing to do with the stereotypical leader type In fact, your gender, ethnicity, height, weight, personality, and degree (or not) can qualify you for leadership!

Leadership is Learnable for Everyone

Leadership is about effectively leading people through learned skills and behaviors. Everyone’s behaviors are guided by their values and beliefs, and perhaps surprisingly, can be changed. Think about it. We do this all the time when we learn something new about food or plastic or our health. When we learn that eating more greens is healthy, we find ways to add them into our daily eating habits. When we learn how devastating all the plastic we’ve been using is to our environment, we figure out ways to use it less. When we learn about different ways to improve our health, we start to do them. And the same can be true about your leadership skills, when you decide to learn the skills that will make you more effective, you can change your behaviors!

Your natural gifts, abilities and personality are an asset to your leadership style! Implementing the leadership skills that enable you to meet and exceed the expectations of the people you serve and motivate your team to join you is not difficult, in fact, it’s incredibly doable. You simply need to learn the skills and apply them. Anyone can do it!