Leadership – innate or developed talent?

Leadership is the ability of an individual to guide a company's decisions towards a common goal.

What is leadership?

Leadership is about being someone who takes responsibility for creating an environment where team members can contribute effectively to achieving shared goals.

Exercising leadership means setting goals and making the common objective clear. In the PMBOK project management guide, one of the premises is to assemble a team and make them understand that you do not need to have a position to assume leadership behavior.

Having the integrity to answer for what you receive is the first big step to awakening self-leadership.

ISO 10018:2022 Standard

In the ISO 10018:2022 Quality Management System – People Engagement standard, in which I participated as a Brazilian delegate in an international research project, the ISO TC176 working group argued that people are not obliged to follow ineffective strategies. This poses a major challenge for today's leader.

Purpose of leadership

In the past, the rule was: he who can, commands; he who has judgment, obeys; nowadays, with the advent of technology: he who knows, commands; he who is competent, acts. And to achieve the first meaning of an ORGANIZATION = COMMON OBJECTIVES, a sense of responsibility is necessary FOR THE SAKE OF THE ECOSYSTEM, NOT THE SELF-SYSTEM.

What makes a leader?

Some scholars believe that leaders are born with innate personality traits and characteristics, while others argue that leadership can be developed and improved over time through education, experience, and training.

I agree with the summary: I believe that leaders are born with the drive to not settle for what doesn't work, but it is also possible to develop this ability, as long as there is a purpose greater than that person's material desires.

When there is no such thing, we usually find leaders who get lost in numbers, which can make the environment toxic and full of conflicts, which ends up making it difficult to manage well, considering that in order to survive, people put filters on their mistakes, and then the organization doesn't learn.

Leadership is not for everyone. Maintaining good results with leadership is even more difficult because it depends on people, and humanity is increasingly self-absorbed and has understood that it sells its work time, so it is increasingly demanding of its rights, and at other times it passes its duties on to others.

Useful tips:

My advice to anyone who needs to undertake this herculean task is:

• Be humble, you don't need to know everything.

• Share the WHY.

• Set clear goals.

• Ask your subordinates to suggest the HOW TO DO IT.

• Readjust the route and improve processes whenever necessary.

• Do not encourage competition, but rather collaboration among the team.

• Learn as soon as possible that what people do is not about you, it is about them.

• Be sincere and enthusiastic.