Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next.
Jonas Salk
Leadership is practically in my blood. From a young age, I have been thrust into leadership positions where I had to rely on my wits to succeed. Nonetheless, I always was a pretty good gut leader.
Picture this scene: a 12-year-old me, skinny, thick glasses slipping down my nose, and nerdy as hell. Somehow, I ended up in charge of my Boy Scout troop way before I was old enough. I was king of the nerds! We had our rough spots during my reign, but I had my moments as well.
A little jump ahead and I’m 18 and a full-fledged boss, complete with employees (most older than me), a ton of responsibilities, and a gaggle of volunteers. My title was technical director of a small community theater, which meant I had to make sure we got the sets built, the lights lit, the sound balanced, and the flats painted. I made my share of blunders, but people followed me despite my tender age. This has been a recurring theme ever since: leading, whether in an official capacity or just stepping up as needed.
Jump ahead a lot more, and I’m landing my first job as a professor. True to form, in no time I was a faculty leader at my university, chairing committees, running the faculty government, and even overseeing the university’s reaccreditation process. Before I knew what was happening, I was a dean.
I am not boasting when I say that have innate leadership ability. It’s just a fact, like being right handed (proud of that, by the way, sooo proud to be a rightee!), and probably—like right-handedness—the result of me being my parents’ son.
But my leadership instincts were never enough. Sure I could navigate through challenges and get others to do what needed to be done, but I had no idea why. No big deal, right? It’s not important to know why, right?
Wrong. It is a big deal. As my deanly responsibilities expanded exponentially, it dawned on me that leadership required more than intuition, much more. Gut leadership could only take me so far. My understanding needed to stretch beyond just the what and how of leadership. I needed to intentionally and fundamentally grasp the point of what I was doing so that I could know how to do it well and what to do next. Only then could I excel as a leader.
Beyond the Gut
Leadership is a skill, and like any other skill, while you can be born into it, it must also be learned. The thing with learning new skills, though, is that while someone can guide you through the process, they cannot teach you to master the actual skill. That only comes through application and practice. [link]
When my niece was very young, I was playing with her in the back yard. The game was to kick a rubber ball between my legs while I blocked with my hands. Boom! She kicked it so hard that it sailed over my head, over the large fence behind me, and into the next yard. She was four.
Fast forward, and there she is being honored as one of the best high school soccer players in the state. How did she get there? I’d love to say it was that makeshift backyard game with her uncle, but no. Nor was it only her innate athletic abilities, the ones that enabled her to blast that rubber ball into orbit. Truth is, she took that raw talent and then worked her tail off. My niece’s secret sauce was the combination of gut-ability and effort.
And I am sure there were girls she played with and against who were also very good but did not have the same inborn athleticism. How did they succeed? Just the same as my niece, they worked at it.
It’s similar with leadership. You can be born with some degree of leadership acumen, but to succeed on the big stage, you have to study leadership and apply what you learn. But even if you are not born with the knack, you can still learn it all the same. Either way, leadership—like soccer playing—is a lifelong discipline that requires mastery and upkeep.
The Necessity of Learning to Lead
Here’s the reality, though. There is no point to learning leadership if you don’t do leadership, if you don’t continuously apply what you learn. Take my niece. If she hung up her cleats after high school, you wouldn’t say she was a soccer player anymore, would you? She would become a former soccer player. Same for leadership. If you stop applying your skills, you cease to be a leader. That’s true even if you retain a management title.
This profundity probably comes across as a well-duh insight, but we see it ignored all the time. We see bosses who know how to lead and maybe once did so but now choose to be mere bosses. I don’t know why—maybe out of ego or laziness or weakness. Imagine someone who used to play soccer but hasn't touched a ball in years suddenly jumping into the big game as team captain. Chaos ensues. Same thing with all those ex-leader bosses. And throw them into the mix with all the bosses who were never leaders, and now you know why you hate your job.
I’ve said it before. Leadership is a lifelong discipline.
It’s not a temporary state or a one-and-done thing; it’s a journey of learning, applying, and evolving. If you stop at any point of the journey, you're not a leader. At best, you used to be one. And don’t we have enough bosses pretending to lead and sowing nothing but misery and chaos? I’ll bet you can name names.
Let's break that cycle, shall we? Leadership is a commitment, not a title. And while you can grow up with leadership skills and gut your way through, that is not enough. You can only grow leadership skills through study and practice. And that study and practice must be ongoing and aimed at improvement. Pulling that off takes real discipline, but if you have ever worked for a true leader you know. The rewards are glorious.
How much do you lead with your gut and how much with your brain? Do you treat leadership as a discipline?
Leaders must approach leadership as a lifelong discipline, and I can help.
If you want to learn more about how to become a great leader in this world of bad bosses, visit GuidanceForGreatness.com.
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Gut Leadership Is Good, but Brain Leadership Is Better