There’s a belief in certain circles that leaders are born, and not made. Proponents of this theory see business school mostly as a waste of time. “How can you teach something that is not really teachable”, they ask. “It’s either you have it, or you don’t”, most are quick to add.
Another school of thought claims that best practices, and in turn leadership, can be taught, but only to willing and highly motivated learners. Naturally most of the supporters of this view work in the four walls of business schools. Or they facilitate business courses with snazzy titles like “Dare to succeed”, “Winning the battle of business”, etc.
As someone that has spent over three years in business school – on both sides of the class – I must confess that I am sitting on the fence right now. I was an eager student while earning my MBA. I heard all the theories. I ate them up. I was being prepared to tackle the world of real business (or so I thought). Later on as a lecturer, a role I played for two years, I taught the theories I’d learned as an MBA student. I taught them with as much passion as when I’d first learned them. Perhaps even more. I was a business evangelist, spewing the truths of the workings of the capitalist system. I was fishing for men, businessmen.
Today I find myself leaning more and more to the side of the fence that insists leaders are born and not made. What led to this re-orientation? Reality. Three years of working in industry, first in telecoms and then in banking, have woken me up to the reality that some people have it, and most don’t. It’s just a fact of life.
Forget all those aptitude tests HR people like to conduct to determine who will succeed on the job or not. I am more and more convinced that they are a bloody waste of time. After all, if they were so good, how do they allow so many people that “don’t have it” join firms that keep shouting that they only recruit “the best”? "The best at what?” I ask. The best at not taking decisions, the best at having zero initiative, the best at doing the minimum to get the paycheck? “The best at what?” I ask again. I do understand that HR needs a means of screening applicants, and what they use now works, somewhat. My fear is just that they are using the wrong criteria to separate the leaders from the followers, the suns from the moons.
Suns shine bright. Leaders stand out. They make a difference. Revolution is their game. They create momentum. They innovate. It’s just that simple. Of course there are different ways of standing out, but regardless of the means, most real leaders have something in common – heart. They are risk-takers who will not settle for second best. They love themselves too much to let the good things in life pass them by. To put it another way, “they’re hungry”, and that hunger drives them.
Moons reflect light. Managers are part of the woodwork. They keep the status quo. Evolution is their watchword. They maintain the momentum created by others (the good managers, that is). They manage. Managers, the breed I suspect business schools have been churning out over the years under the guise of leaders, are masters at perfecting what is. They can spot all the errors in a proposal. They can tell you why your processes don’t work. But give them a blank sheet and ask them to create and they are lost. They won’t even know where to start.
So what to do? What hope for HR? What role is the b-school of the 21st century to play given the reality that most of their products go on to make good managers and terrible leaders?
My solution is disarmingly simple. Teach people to appreciate themselves, and their leadership potentials will show. And it is in that that I think those in the “leaders are born camp” have it right (at least partially). It’s not so much that some people are born to be leaders, no. I believe it’s more a case that some lucky people are born with an amazingly deep sense of innate self-worth, and these people, given the right education and chances for advancement – by their family and society at large – often turn out to be exceptional leaders.
And this would also explain why b-schools find it so challenging to make leaders of managers. You can teach all the theories in the world, but unless the recipients have a solid foundation to build on – i.e. love for self, love for life, love for success – you’re not going to get very far. You’ll only be equipping people that can only think within the box with tools for thinking better within the box.
As Einstein once said, “problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them”. The great man also said, “imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand”. Leaders are needed to show humanity what is possible, what can be. Self-love and a genuine desire for self-improvement form the engine that drives the intellectual processes that create new thoughts, processes and tools for mankind’s benefit.
I suspect this also explains why some countries are better developed than others. Why some forge ahead, while others in similar situations fall behind. Some countries just have a solid culture of self-appreciation. We’re not talking being emotional here. We’re talking about countries with citizens that believe in the innate importance of human life. Countries and cultures that believe in progress, in the continuous betterment of the quality of life of their citizens. A marked difference from the apathy to life that pervades out own country – poor working conditions for factory workers (and surprisingly, for professionals as well), corpses on our roads, non-existent infrastructure, an appalling educational system, etc. The list goes on.
But back to my suggestion. Love. Self-appreciation. Having a sense of true worth. Disarming simple and basic. Aren’t these things we learn as children? So yes, in a way leaders are made. But not by b-schools and “success facilitators”, but more by great parents, aided by a society that affirms the basic goodness and worth of the individual. Perhaps this partly explains Nigeria's present situation, where those at the helm of affairs are not only horrible managers, but terrible leaders as well.
