Leadership Series: The Kickoff! Leadership in an Embryo

Leaders, that’s what some of us are, while others hope to be. The hopefuls look upon the great with a certain amount of awe, envy and perhaps even regret that those “qualities” do not seem to come naturally to them. For these people such as us, can we hope that we might one day become at least half of these great leaders whom we so admire? Are little “future leader” labels stamped on each of our embryo? In this Kickoff of our Leadership Series, we shall look at the age-old question as to whether leadership skills are embedded into one’s genetics or can be cultivated, and more.

If it is the former, it would be a disappointing fact of life indeed. Most would opt for the second answer – that leadership can be cultivated – a more optimistic one, and in my opinion, rightly so. Just by looking at the number of courses and seminars around centering on leadership and management (like those at NUS Extension), or the number of Toastmasters clubs touting to improve your public speaking skills and thus increase your ability to be a more charismatic leader, and of course the availability of books that claim to be leadership bibles. A realization strikes: yes, you might have that killer team, killer idea, and killer business execution skills – but do you have what it takes to hold your whole act together? Are you able to not just manage, but to lead your team towards success? And if not, can you one day hope to do so by attending courses and reading literature from the self-improvement section? Be they effective or not, one good thing about such literature is to provide inspiration and hope which is already taking one step forward towards being a better leader – if you accept the premise that leadership can be cultivated – which we try to do so here.

The way I see it, leadership is not a set of qualities, instead, it’s a mindset. But that does not mean that just by “thinking” like a leader, you’ll be one – wishful thinking, my dear. So what exactly do I mean when I think leadership is a mindset and how does it advance our answer in responding to the issue between genetics and cultivation? First, we must understand that a mindset is essentially a framework within which our actions and behaviour spring forth. In the case of a mindset, this framework is deeply entrenched and works intuitively and subconsciously – with sets of belief systems scattered throughout. These belief systems are the driving forces of who a person is, and are demonstrated through interactions with the person.

So for a person with a “leadership mindset”, how is (s)he generally like? Common traits used to describe leaders include: charismatic, visionary, inspirational, encouraging. At one glance, the first three might look harder to achieve with “just” hard work because they are characteristics usually acknowledged as rare in a person, and are thus seen as more innate than say the ability of being encouraging. Many people can be encouraging or learn to say more encouraging words (even if they do not truly believe in their own words), but we will not call many people charismatic or as having vision or being inspirational (feel free to correct me if you think I’m mistaken). This is where it becomes more interesting: is rarity associated with innateness? For a sought-after characteristic, does its ability to stir up significant emotional pinings impair our analytic ability and thus lead us falsely to amplify the elusiveness of that characteristic?How about underneath those four qualities, what kind of core motivational factors lie dormant waiting to be discovered? Off the cuff and very superficially, one might say that:

• the want to make everyone happy leads to charisma
• the joy in playing with future possibilities and finding one that stands out leads to vision
• the ego boosting effect of effective persuasion leads to inspirational
• the satisfaction of making someone feel better leads to encouragement

If we were to say that these underlying motivations drive the leader, then anyone could also adopt these motivations and be on the path towards having charisma. But we all know that it is not that easy because usually, even if people try to adopt certain ways of thinking in order to bring out a certain quality, the new way of thinking has not had time to germinate and to permeate throughout the individual; thus leading to very prefunctory behaviour. Secondary characteristics are thus needed to further corroborate the absorption and application of the new mode of thinking: tenacity, determination, discipline – are needed by these newbies when they try to emulate their leader role models so that in time to come, perhaps these seemingly elusive qualities might come more naturally to them.

To bring us back to the issue of innateness, can qualities like being charismatic, visionary, inspirational, encouraging, tenacity, determination and discipline naturally present in leaders – were they born with these qualities? Can that tiny embryo encompass all there is to have in a great leader? A thought experiment: how different would it be if Steve Jobs (a figure who is usually called a charismatic leader) had grown up caged? Or what if he had grown up with a different family background (perhaps without all the parental complications like divorce and adoptive)? Two identical embryos: one caged, one roamed naturally. But throw them both into the exact same situation requiring leadership expertise, give them enough time, which one would flourish more?

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