Not Everyone Is A Leader

These are the first 2 lines of an article from Inc. Magazine, and it resonated with me. In my many years of education and training, working with, coaching and developing leaders, there have been more than a few times I have asked myself “what in the world were they thinking promoting this person”.  Usually being the “third party”, I am able to see things from a different perspective, and my interaction with new leaders many times is through a learning or coaching session. 

It is during these times I can see through the bravado of being an individual contributor and actually look at how a new leader thinks, how they are able to process specific learning processes and observe if they are actually grasping the learning. Many times I have a good indication if they will incorporate the concepts taught into their leadership lives for improvement.

Usually, when people attend a learning session, or spend time on coaching, they are looking to make a change in their behavior that will somehow make them a better leader. One of the questions I love to ask during the opening of any session is “Why are you here?” The answer to this question is the first indicator if this person is open to being coached to a better leader or not.

I worked with high potential candidates for a couple of years.  Each year the senior leaders chose a group of district managers they felt had high potential to go to the regional leadership level. This became their pool of candidates for promotion. There was specific selection criteria for nominating a candidate. Once nominated, the candidate had to accept and commit to the program. However, there were nominated candidates who chose not to go into the program for various reasons. I respected their decisions. They knew if they were able to handle the commitment necessary. The program had a high success rate. Over the two year period about 80% of the candidates who completed the program were promoted to a more senior position within the next five years.

Why such a high rate of success?  I felt like it was their desire and willingness to learn and be coached. They were able to set aside their own ego, and build from their skills to be an even better leader.

Which brings me back to those who I wonder how they are even in a leadership position. I have seen many good people fail at leadership because they could not get out of their own head.  They were not open to feedback and coaching, and thus their leadership failed. I know specifically of one leader who “already knows it all”.  Who does a great job managing upward, saying and doing the right things to upper managers, but when you look at the leading of his team, he is failing miserably.  There is no camaraderie, engagement scores are down, not a lot of teamwork, and many of his team are a phone call away from leaving.

Leadership is not a position, but an action. Anyone can be a leader, regardless of their position. And there definitely are people in senior positions, who do not display acceptable leadership qualities with their people, and others.

It is frustrating to observe and work with closed-minded people, who do not take feedback and are not willing to grow in their leadership skills.  Sad actually, because there is so much more that could be accomplished if they were a real leader of people.

But it is oh, so satisfying to have that person who puts the needs of their people up with the priorities of what has to be accomplished, who are truly open to feedback and coaching, and watch them grow into a great leader of people.

Not everyone is a leader, and many times it is their own fault.