Episode 53: Leadership - Innate or Learned; How to Become a Leader

Welcome to another edition of “Around with Randall”, your weekly podcast making your nonprofit more effective for your community, and here is your host the CEO and founder of Hallett Philanthropy, Randall Hallett. 

I’m so pleased to have you joining me on another edition of the podcast, “Around with Randall.” Today's conversation, discussion, is really about leadership and whether or not you're born with it or you can learn to grow into it. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve had a couple of examples where either in coaching situations or a little less formally with gift officers the conversation has come around to their thought process and how they can become a better leader, or asking me how I got to be a better leader, and that caused me to think about this a little bit and I thought it'd be a good conversation today. And then on top of it there was a situation, or at least a discussion, inside my own family that caused me to think about it a little bit as well, and we'll kind of close up with that as we get into the tactical. So let's talk about what some of the perceptions are of leaderships and leadership development. 

The one that you maybe hear most often is that leaders are just born with it. It’s innate, it's part of their DNA. And the argument really stems from the idea that there's maybe two or three components of leadership that are too difficult to manufacture, to fake. The first is a great deal of self-confidence. Leaders are sometimes associated with a gregarious self-confidence nature that people just tend to follow and even if they make the wrong decision. Number two, they're willing to make a decision and if it's wrong they are willing to admit it. So this idea of confidence, the ability to make a decision. And then the third is charisma. What attracts people to other people, and the argument is it's charisma, and that charisma is something you can't fake but it's also very hard to define. If you ask someone who's following a leader that they truly believe in they can't really define that charisma. Sometimes somebody just has quote it unquote, and all of that can't be faked. It's just born into the DNA and it comes out more naturally. For centuries this was the thought but in that same thing it created a discriminatory process or practice of leadership. How could someone from maybe a less wealthy background without that education - how could they be born with those skills? For centuries it was also defined as probably more male and even more so dominant white male in the growth of the of the industrialized world. So innate leadership has some downsides in its argument that probably aren't discussed enough. The question is, is it true and we can thank science for actually coming up with some answers?

In 2006 and 2007 three great researchers decided to look at this issue purely from a scientific perspective and it became probably one of the most important conversations about leadership and how one might define it and where it comes from. What they did was is they took 178 fraternal twins and 214 identical twins and they evaluated their leadership components as they went into life. They made sure that they were brought up in the same household, that they had similar opportunities. Even though they didn't choose the same things they tried to moderate any significant differences in the existence of these twins totaling over 400 or just short of 400.

Based on all of this evidence what they found is is that about 32% of leadership they could tie to some type of genetic heredity. Well, my math's pretty good… that leaves about 68% of the idea of leadership coming from somewhere else. And what they found out was it was based on the environment. I think this study has a lot of credibility because what it's saying is is that there are certain people who have more -  a greater - sense of comfortability, being comfortable in leadership opportunities. And you can think of twins that have done very well athletically, in politics, in space, there are a number of examples, but that's a limited portion. So what I like about this is I do know people from early on and you probably can think about your own early years who naturally stood out. They just seemed to be in front of everybody they were comfortable with it and that continued through life. But what's more important to me is the 68% was saying 68% is environmental. It's opportunity. It's learned. 

In another study done later on the question became, okay so what are the things we have to do to identify how to learn about leadership? And so three great researchers did a study of 165 undergraduate students who were taking a leadership -  internal leadership  - basically class, studied them before the class, during the class, and then tested them after the class. And this study found two critical components of the students as they came out. Number one is is that they had a significant gains in self-efficacy. We're going to come to Maslow, one of my favorite conversation pieces here in a minute, but the idea that they were developed more in terms of how they looked at themselves they also had additional skill sets that could be used in those situations. The second thing is is that they learned very quickly that everybody has, even after this class, different levels of comfort in key leadership areas. Whether it's communication or decision-making, knowledge of content, all kinds of things, we're going to talk about here on the tactical. What's interesting is is that that's also saying people came into the course in different places and they left the course in different places and not everybody wanted to be a leader, wanted to be the leader. 

And so we have the study with the twins that's saying it's a learned behavior, 68% of it can be learned, and that doesn't mean you can't learn all the way up to being a great leader. And the other is the fact that when they looked at leadership class kids you know students coming in they came out with better skills, more more self-efficacy, they believed in themselves more, they understood themselves more, they had greater motivation, and they had better skill sets to do some of the things that are important to leadership. 

So I started the podcast with this connection of, well I’ve got some clients, there's been some questions. It's been very interesting discussions. But something happened in my house that tied all of this together for me, and what it is is my eight-year-old and we're looking at things that he can do to better himself beyond just going to school every day. That includes athletic activities -  soccer, basketball, baseball -  I don't care if it's any ever any good I just wanted to have fun and learn. But he's a unique kid and one we're very proud of and an intellectual curious, intellectually curious, child and so I thought you know let's take a look at cub scouts. And I didn't know much about cub scouts and so when you look at the history you find out that Robert Baden-Powell in England in the late 1800s into the very first few years of the 1900s - 20th century -  did a study and what he wanted to figure out was how do we train young people, and at that time it was boys and in particular white boys, to be ready for the future. He was worried about the future of England, and he wrote the first part of what we think of as scouting today. Scouting for boys with all of these activities and development opportunities for boys to learn how to become leaders, and really his goal was to dispel this idea of the natural skillset that comes with DNA that makes up a leader. And what he was developing was a process in a program that could take anyone and give them more opportunity to learn the skills around leadership. If we go one step further, if we think about the military as one example, they don't take DNA tests to figure out who are the leaders, they take whoever comes in the door and whether it's to become a staff sergeant, an officer, as a lieutenant, or all the way down the line further on their career a general or an admiral, and it's just not in the United States but around the world, they have to teach leadership and really that was the basis of what Powell was thinking about with the boy scouts.

We've also evolved in this thought process. We've begun to differentiate different kinds of leaderships opportunity, skills, people. It's just not leadership and that's it. We have the authoritative type leader, as it's been developed. We have the participative leader, the democratic leader, the delegatory or delegating leader, kind of lasse faire, the transformational leader, the transactional leader, the situational leader, all of whom who have different characteristics, all of whom came to their leadership in different ways. And so the end of the day leadership's a learned skill, yes, some people might have some natural connections through DNA, through whatever, that allows them to be a little more comfortable with it, but everybody can learn to be a leader if given the chance.

So the tactical pieces, by the way that's why we're - why I believe in cub scouts and boy scouts and why our son will be doing it - because I think it's a great opportunity for him to learn about himself. So what are the keys for leadership? 

We'll move into the tactical, and the final tactical piece. What are four things you can do today to start planning on what leadership might be for you? So there are some key components to leadership and there, one might leave one off or leave the other off, but they're pretty uniform. A strong set of communication skills is really important. Being able to communicate with others so others understand where you are and what you believe in. Certainly the idea of self-confidence, and this is where I will circle back into Maslow. I’d go even to if you can get to self-actualization, knowing who you are, being comfortable with it, but also knowing where your deficits are and how you can learn from them, and learn about them, and learn through them, to make them less of that deficit. Expertise in a certain area I think is critically important. It's not mandatory, but if you have a track record and some experience and knowledge of a certain subject matter you're more likely to be comfortable in that environment with others who have other experiences in that same area, but that doesn't mean you have to. Some of the great CEOs in our country's history had no idea what the company did before they got there, but it helps. Certainly, being mentored is critically important. Finding people that can give you honest feedback, that can help you grow, who are willing to say this is a whole is critically important. Being self-motivated, willing to get up in the morning and dig in and get your job done, to be seen as someone who's actively engaged, helps with leadership skills, having tacked part of the communication and knowing how to talk to people without insulting them or bringing them down is critically important. The willingness to make decisions is critically important. Leaders, whether they like it or not, are going to have to eventually make decisions whether that's alone or in a small group or depending on others to give recommendations. Eventually, decisions have to be made. And finally, being creative. Creativity can create a lot of opportunity for leaders to think outside the box, to be effective, to find alternative solutions to troubling situations. Those are all skill sets. A lot of them are learned. The question is what can you do with them today? What is it you can do with those or to develop those or just wanting to become a better leader? 

So there's four things I’m going to recommend. Number one is, don't be afraid to take chances, and failure is your friend. The most you'll ever learn are, when you fail, not when you succeed. And the only way to fail often enough in a controlled world is being willing to take small calculated risks. Don't be afraid of the unknown. Embrace it. Number two, ask for more opportunity. Ask for the for the chance to be more involved, to learn, and when it's given to you grab it, run with it. Sometimes we have to help people understand we're looking for growth because they're so head down into the minutia of what they're doing. Number three is find a good mentor or two. Find someone you believe in that'll be honest with you, that you can trust. Find out what they think of you, where the holes are, how you can grow. Find people that are great examples of the person or characteristics you want, person you want to be. Number four, be a lifelong learner. Always be interested, intellectually curious, in something new, something else. Be willing to think about, how do I become a better communicator, a better writer. Is there toastmasters where you can become a better speaker, or areas of weakness.

I was working with a gift officer here recently who's looking for what comes next and we started talking and she's very much not pro-business. She has a very strong liberal arts perspective of the world and I said I think that's mission-driven and will serve you well. Here's the problem in the area that you you work in, business principles, accounting, finance, marketing are critical and how much experience or exposure do you have to those. The answer was none. And I said it's a deficit. I’m not saying change who you are but if you're going to work with finance in a large organization you probably should know some finance. It will make you feel better. It will give you more opportunity to be a leader.

Embracing the idea of lifelong learning drives my wife nuts. When we're watching a movie I’ve got my phone, not to be distracted from the movie. I’m googling stuff around it particularly if it's a historical film what else was going on, who are these people. I’m just curious. If you can take chances, calculated risks, if you can ask for more opportunity so you can grow, if you can find good people that will help you along the way, and finally, if you're willing to learn constantly, formally or informally, you have a better chance of finding your leadership potential. Leadership can be developed. You might have a skill or two that gets you a little bit of the way, but until we hone our skills and our self-efficacy it's tough to be the leader we want to be.

Just want to remind you the blog's always posted - two to three a week - 90-second reads…get you to think a little bit about what's going on in the world or what's going on in the nonprofit world, more particularly, at least most of the time. Also, if you want to communicate with me, send me an email podcast@hallettphilanthropy.com, that's podcast at hallettphilanthropy.com, or if you have something to complain about or don't think I mis did something right or missed something reeks r-e-e-k-s at hallettphilanthropy.com. Really appreciate your time and most importantly I appreciate what you do in this world.

 We have, as I like to think of it, three groups of people all defined by the old Gaelic saying some people make things happen, some people watch things happen, and then there are those who wondered what happened. The essence of life is being someone who can make something happen which is what the non-profit world's all about, to help people who are probably wondering what happened. And I hope you feel a little bit of that today, and I hope you feel as if you're making a contribution to your non-profit and most importantly to your community. Can't thank you enough for your time. Hope you found this helpful today, leadership. Go find it and I can't wait to see you the next time right here on “Around with Randall”. Don't forget, make it a great day.