Are great leaders born or do they develop over time?
I have had the privilege throughout the past 30+ years to work alongside many leaders and managers and I can honestly say great leaders and managers are usually regular people just like you and me. I say that because I don't want you to think you have to be born with a special set of genes to be a great leader or manager. Great leaders and managers can be developed.
The whole topic of leadership and management development is near and dear to my heart because it's a rare exception to ever see an organization performing at a level higher than the performance of the leaders and managers of the organization. As go the leaders, so goes the rest of the organization, so building strong entrepreneurial businesses begins with building strong leadership teams.
To help move you forward towards that end, I'm going to attempt to condense much of what's been written and taught about developing leaders and managers into the few things that are most important and share those in a series of future blog posts. From this post, I just want you to walk away with two points:
1) You can do this. Being a great leader and manager has little to do with your temperament or, as stated above, your genetic coding.
2) You must truly care about the people you will be leading and managing. This is the one essential ingredient. You have to care more about them than your ego and your own personal gain. You will never be a great leader or manager if you don't care about your people and their progress. Tyrants can move a business forward, but they'll never experience the pleasure of leading a loyal, passionate, committed army into battle.
If you're a regular person who cares about helping others to reach their full potential, you can be a great leader and manager. We'll get into how in future posts and take it one step at a time.
