THEORY 22

WARREN BENNIS ON THE MYTH THAT LEADERS ARE BORN NOT MADE

Use to remind you that with practice you can become a great leader.

Warren Bennis (1925–2014) was an American academic, management consultant and an influential writer on the subject of leadership. One of the tasks he set himself was to demystify the concept of leadership. He firmly believed that:

The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born … The myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That’s nonsense … Leaders are made rather than born.

Warren Bennis

In his seminal book, with Burt Nanus, Leaders: Strategies for taking charge he provides pen portraits of forty successful leaders, many of whom clearly lacked charisma as most people would understand it.

WHAT TO DO

  • To become an expert in any field Malcom Gladwell, author of The Outliers, suggests that you need to practice for 10,000 hours. This figure seems to hold true over a wide range of professions from science to football and from writing to medicine. Assuming a thirty-six hour working week that amounts to approximately 278 weeks or 5.34 years of work experience as a leader is required to become an expert. Unfortunately, you can probably double that figure because much of your time will be spent on administration, drinking coffee and attending meetings. So start to become a leader early!
  • From the day you start work don’t think of yourself as an accountant, economist, systems analyst or the member of any other trade or profession. Think of yourself as a leader and act accordingly. Record your success and failures in your learning journal and analyse the reason for both.
  • Read about leadership. Vary your reading between text books, leadership guides and biographies of great leaders. This provides the fuel for your thinking about leadership.
  • Arrange to shadow a leader you respect in your organisation for a couple of months on a part-time basis – you still have to do the day job. If that isn’t possible observe the actions of those people in the organisation who you and others think of as leaders. These people may not be members of senior management. They might be supervisors or middle managers. In your learning journal record how they, and other leaders, deal with specific situations. Analyse what they did and try to identify the ideas and strategies that they used.
  • Whether you are a senior, middle or junior manager, volunteer to lead projects, especially those requiring cross-departmental co-operation. Project management will provide you with experience of dealing with a range of issues, people and disciplines, many of which will be outside your normal professional experience. You may find it difficult, but as a developmental experience it’s invaluable.
  • Don’t be put off if people tell you you’re not a leader. What they really mean is that you are not their kind of leader. Mrs Thatcher was loathed and despised by large sections of the British public, but no one could deny that she was a leader.

QUESTIONS TO ASK

  • Do I think of myself as a leader? If not, why not?
  • Who’s the best leader I’ve ever worked for? What were the characteristics I admired most about their style of leadership?
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