Born Leaders

Anyone Have One They Can Spare?

Through out my life I have heard many times, “he was a born leader”; that’s a load of you know what. I bought into that for many years early in my career. I found out the hard way when I gained the task of hiring or promoting managers.

Being a young hardheaded manager it took me some time to learn that Leaders are created not born. Before I learned that pearl of wisdom, I often found myself promoting or hiring some of the best workers I knew. I filled open leadership positions with these A+ workers only to have that position become open again when I got frustrated that the A+ workers didn’t become A+ leaders.  What a friend called “Promote and Destroy” trapped me for the longest time in a cycle of burning through great workers. I was replacing ineffective leaders with talented workers only to destroy them by not preparing them to lead others. It wasn’t until after I grew completely frustrated that my mentor let me in on his secret to success. This secret wasn’t something he learned at an Ivy League school; no, his mentor taught it to him.

Oh by the way if you don’t have a great mentor to help you along; find one quick. Life is a lot easier to travel if you have someone to help guide the way.

So back to the pearl of wisdom my mentor shared with me. Leaders are created they have never been born. We worked together on creating Developmental Action Plans for all my leaders and key personal. He taught me how to assess my team’s talent compared to the skills of effective leaders. These developmental plans were built to increase the skills sets that they were lacking. I can attribute all my previous management success to evaluating my team’s skill sets and creating Action Plans to give them the tools they needed to be effective leaders.

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Skill Sets of an Effective Leader

Positive attitude
Can Accept and utilize feedback
Gives constructive feedback to others
Effective communicator
Team motivator
Resilient through adversity
Self confident
Personal accountability
Holds others accountable