This is by far the least important question in leadership.

It’s not even the real question.

The real question – the question underneath – is: can leadership be developed and cultivated in someone, or should we just try and find the natural leaders and push them to the front of the line?

So why do we ask the other question – the born or made question?

We ask it because it is so unimportant. Because any time we ask the question we begin a great debate about qualities and behaviors of leaders. We dance around and around question underneath. We are trying to avoid settling on a firm answer because a firm answer has consequences – a firm answer means we have to get working.

If we believe leaders are born than we have to invest in a process to find them. If we believe leaders are made we have to begin to take accountability for developing leaders. Either way, we’re obligated to begin to take action to improve leadership in our world.

So let’s take action.

The answer to the least important question in the world is both – born and made. So let’s stop debating it and start finding those with natural abilities and developing them into great leaders. Let’s also develop those without abilities into better leaders.

It’s an unimportant question with a very important answer.

David Burkus is the editor of LeaderLab. He speaks, consults and serves on the faculty of management at Oral Roberts University’s College of Business.

They need to practice personal leadership.

Defining Personal Leadership

Personal leadership is the leadership of the self.  In addition to the visible and interactive work of organizational leadership, personal leadership is the private, introspective part of leadership that takes place within. Personal leadership is an introspective process that requires focus and attention. Given priority, it can be transformational. In fact, Peter Drucker once called it “the only leadership that’s going to matter in the 21^st century.”

Putting Personal Leadership into Practice

So how does a leader actually practice personal leadership? It looks like this:

1. Take time to think. Leaders need to step out of the daily rush and think about what they’re doing and why. Doing so, they will find the clarity and focus they need to get back into the action in the most effective way.

1. Look inside. Instead of being driven by the demanding urgencies, leaders can discover their inner resources – their strengths, their values, and their aspirations.

1. Look for ways to align and integrate your life. We are who we are wherever we are. The closer leaders can tie their true selves to their leadership roles, the happier and healthier they will be – on all fronts.

The economic and business environment may be out of our control. Leaders’ ability to thrive within this environment, on the other hand, is very much in their own hands. Personal leadership gives leaders a way to fill themselves up with the motivation that will help them thrive again.

Joelle K. Jay, Ph. D., MCC, is an executive coach, speaker and author specializing in leadership development and executive education in Fortune 500 companies. She is the author of The Inner Edge: The 10 Practices of Personal Leadership. For a Free Executive Summary of The Inner Edge, go to www.JoelleKJay.com. 

One fascinating example is that of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was the surprise winner of a hotly contested primary that included personal attacks and attempted coup d’etats. Once he had secured the nomination, and later the presidency of the United States, Lincoln assembled his cabinet primarily of the very men he quarreled with for the nomination. This “team of rivals” was able to provide a variety of perspectives and create a tension over the solutions that avoided the traditional, yes-man saturated groupthink sessions that marked so many other president’s cabinets.

What is important is for the leader of such diverse rivalries to sustain the right amount of creative friction, taking care to produce the tension needed to refine new ideas and challenge old assumptions while ensuring that the tension doesn’t get overbearing and melt the team. While there was a team of rivals in Lincoln’s cabinet, I suspect it was always certain who that needed leader was.

We tend to think of creatives as artists, musicians and writers. However, Lincoln’s deliberate attempt to leverage tension provided him with a style of creativity he found quite useful in navigating us through an equally tumultuous feud.

David Burkus is the editor of LeaderLab. He speaks, consults and serves on the faculty of management at Oral Roberts University’s College of Business.

Linus Pauling is the only person to have one two unshared Nobel Prizes, so I’d imagine he knows a bit about good ideas. His idea is simple to generate lots of ideas and let most of them fail. The few that don’t might just be great ideas.

Modern popular press literature is starting to support this idea. In his new book, Peter Sims discusses how companies and leaders that produce breakthrough ideas often do so by placing many “little bets” and building off of small discoveries. Indeed, if the apocryphal story of Edison remarking, “I discovered 10,000 ways not to make a light bulb” is accurate, one suspects that creative leaders already knew this. It appears one of the most potent ways leaders can develop creativity in followers is by giving them freedom to fail. Within organizations, not often known for their tolerance of failure, leaders can act as human shields, protecting them from the potential negative impacts of their failure.

But most leaders are afraid to open the door up to failure. An objection I often hear is “how much failure is enough?” I’m not sure that question is all that important. A more important question is, “what types of failure it allowable?” Surely failure that stems from poor performance or a poor person-task fit cannot be tolerated and must be addressed. But failure that resulted from experimentation is different. The “little bets” are designed to push the creativity and innovation further (Sims, 2011). I’m not sure that setting a failure quota establishes that. Instead, leaders can build a culture where failure is welcomed, so long as it stems from the right kind of activity (experimentation) and, obviously, isn’t some moral or ethical failure.

I see this idea over and over again in my study of creativity in organizations. It’s such an elegant solution to the creativity problem, even if it relies on a messy process to creativity.

Sims, P. (2011). Little bets: How breakthrough ideas emerge from small discoveries. New York: Free Press.

David Burkus is the editor of LeaderLab. He speaks, consults and serves on the faculty of management at Oral Roberts University’s College of Business.

In this episode, we talk to Dr. Hurley about the importance of trust, how the decision to trust is made and how leaders can become more trustworthy.

I appreciated the depth of research in Dr. Hurley’s tome on trust. The appendix to the book provides citations for numerous well-structured studies on trust and antecedents to trust. Furthermore, I appreciate how Dr. Hurley’s Decision to Trust Model isn’t a simple “Ten Steps to Better Trust” snake oil. Instead of trying to sell the reader on a step-by-step process to win trust, Dr. Hurley provides context around the issue of trust and suggests subtle ways to begin the long-process of earning trust from followers and from leaders.

If you’re looking for a primer on the role of trust in organizations and life, I highly recommend Dr. Robert Hurley’s The Decision to Trust.

I’m guilty of propagating this. The first issue of LeaderLab Papers featured a curated discussion on this difference. The end result of that piece, however, was that the distinction was irrelevant.

And it is irrelevant, completely irrelevant.

Some years ago, management was considered a more inclusive term and included how to lead. Indeed, most literature on management included a discussion of leadership. However, somewhere along the line it was decided that leadership meant change, innovation and improvement. Leaders were idealized, managers scorned.

Most attempts at distinction cite that leaders are responsible for change; managers are responsible for proper use of resources. But what change initiatives are successful without proper use of resources? Further, what attempts at managing better don’t require creating change (called improvements) in how organizations utilize resources? There are few, it any of these examples. The truth is that all leaders find themselves required to develop management and all managers find themselves tasked with leading their team.

If you’re still thinking that you are one and not the other, considering learning a bit about the other. It’ll will make you a much better whatever-you-are.

[I realize this post raises the question, what is the least important question in leadership. Stay tuned for that one.]

David Burkus is the editor of LeaderLab. He speaks, consults and serves on the faculty of management at Oral Roberts University’s College of Business.

Read the Article Here

From: John Bell

Re: Your Epitaph as a CEO

If you’re already in the C-Suite, I suggest you take a few moments to contemplate your epitaph. When your days on the throne are over, do you want to be remembered as Jack Bighead or Andy Goodfellow?

The Epitaph of Jack Bighead:

A master dealmaker, the tenacious Jack Bighead believed a good deal was one in which the other side got screwed. Over his highly successful career, Mr. Bighead created hundreds of millions in shareholder value by acquiring, downsizing and selling companies. This hard-driving CEO never let anything stand in the way of his insatiable quest for profit, nor has he any regrets sacrificing family time for the good of the business and the shareholders. On missing the graduations of all four children, Mr. Bighead said, “Comes with the territory. At least each of ‘em got a spanking new sports car.” From his glorious manor on the Boca Raton coast, he contemplates an empty life after the C-Suite with his new wife, Mercedes, the former Miss Las Vegas.

The Epitaph of Andy Goodfellow:

If you met him in the street, you’d never know that the soft-spoken Andy Goodfellow was a successful, results-oriented CEO. He was the type of leader who never talked about himself; he was interested in you. People-first was his modus operandi. Perhaps that’s why Mr. Goodfellow’s employees always gave that “extra mile” for the customer. With great pride, he watched the men and women who worked under him go on to become outstanding CEOs, senior executives and masters in their craft. As for the future, Mr. Goodfellow is excited. He plans to spend more time with his wife of 41 years, his 3 children and 8 grandchildren. “I’ll also be busy heading the Goodfellow Foundation, the charity that helps people help themselves,” he said.

Remember, it is never too late to change. There may be many styles of leadership, and some will hinge on the state of the business. But if you don’t want your CEO epitaph to resemble that of Jack Bighead, be aware of those you touch along the way. Notwithstanding the incessant trials and tribulations, there is every opportunity to lead with honor and do some good with the power of C-Suite while you are there.