Are
you born a leader or do you become one?
This is
a question that always comes up when people talk about leadership.
The general
opinion is that there are people who are born
leaders and there are others that become leaders thanks to their professional
development.
The innate
skills favour the development of the leader, but sometimes a person
acquires training and accumulates experience.
There are
certain leadership techniques like making decisions, managing teams,
motivating, communicating, etc. that a leader has to know and has
to be able to dominate.
It is important
to go to seminars on leadership, and also read books on the matter.
It is also
a good idea to get feed-back from the group to see what you are doing
well and where you can improve.
Assuming
responsibilities, making decisions, solving problems, facing up to
difficult situations, will help you to become an authentic leader.
For this
reason, it is not good “to overprotect” people in their
personal and professional development. It is important that from a
young age a person gets to know the value of effort and that they
have to face up to certain “difficulties”. In short, a
person needs to learn how to cope with life.
You need
to favour employees that enjoy competition and that get used to facing
problems. You need to start getting them prepared so that in the future
they are capable of controlling the organization.
Preparation
and experience are aspects that you have to pay attention to when
training someone and it is convenience to start doing them from youth,
in order to develop one’s leadership capacities.
Another
essential aspect of being a good leader is knowing in depth the area
in which you move.
The leader
of a company can play a secondary role at a tennis club (for example)
because his knowledge of this sport, environment is limited.
However,
a leader is not necessarily a specialist, but he does need to have
solid and fundamental training, which allows him to have clear ideas
and a global knowledge of the activity he is developing (business,
sport, culture, etc).
Leadership
is based on a spontaneous team acknowledgement, which demands the
leader to make the grade and be prepared for all circumstances. If
the group detects that the leader lacks a few significant skills they
will end up rejecting him.
The subordinates
understand that the leader doesn’t have to know absolutely every
single detail about every subject (we have experts for this) but they
do expect him to have a sufficiently solid knowledge.
