Are Leaders Born or Made?

Are leaders born of made? In my opinion this is not a binary question and therefore doesn’t have binary answer. Leadership capability comes down to our degree of ‘Leadership Intelligence’ and how well developed we are in the ‘Five Forms of Leadership Intelligence’.

The Five Forms of Leadership Intelligence:

1. Organisational Intelligence: understanding of the Why we do What we do. The Vision, Purpose, Structure, and Roles and Responsibilities of the organisation.

2. Emotional Intelligence: understanding of Self, Others, Situation, and the ability to Communicate to Inspire, Engage and Influence.

3. Customer Intelligence: understanding What the organisation is doing for Whom in the prevailing environment to attain its purpose.

4. Process Intelligence: understanding How we are doing What we do.

5. Management Intelligence: The ‘how’ leadership. How we organise and ensure what we do is done at the right time, in the right way by the right people.

We each have varying degrees of capability and inclination in each and within each of the 5 forms of Leadership Intelligence. This in part determines our default leadership style and our ability to successfully lead others.

Take for example the classic Charismatic Leader. They may be born with great ability to inspire and engage others but may lack the innate capability or interest in developing Process and Management Intelligence. In this example the Charismatic Leader, without others in their team with complementary knowledge and strengths, has a lower probability of success.

This logic holds for other Leadership Styles. Leaders with great technical and organisational capability but lacking in communication and interpersonal skills will struggle to inspire engage and influence others to achieve outcomes.

Are Leaders Born or Made? My view: we are born with a raw mix of leadership strengths and preferences but to be truly successful we need to be aware of and then develop, or manage through others, our weaker forms of Leadership Intelligence to be an effective leader.

Please enter your details to set up a time discuss how the iV-Leadership program can help you.

In our first catch up we will discuss everything you and your organisation can do to develop your Leadership Intelligence and improve the effectiveness of your team and your own personal effectiveness.