[Business Primer] Leadership Ability — You Either Have It or You Don't

Myths about leadership abound, says Marty Linksy, cofounder of the consultancy Cambridge Leadership Associates and an adjunct lecturer at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. One of the most pernicious is the notion that the ability to lead is a mysterious power only the lucky few possess.

In this interview, Linksy explains what is so wrong about this myth and details the steps that anyone — at any level in an organization — can take to become more effective at exercising leadership. — Christina Bielaszka-DuVernay, Editor, Harvard Management Update

CBD: What makes this particular piece of conventional wisdom about leadership so dangerous?

ML: For one thing, it prevents those who exercise leadership from being the best they could be. People who believe most fervently that leadership is an inborn gift invariably think that they themselves possess it. Such overweening self-confidence leaves little room for self-doubt or self-reflection. But to be effective at leadership, people must step outside themselves to critique their own decisions and actions.

For another thing, it prevents many other people from even trying to fulfill their leadership potential. If an individual doesn’t believe that he has leadership ability — even when he has demonstrated that ability to others — he will not take on larger leadership challenges. And his organization will not benefit from his greater contributions. In both cases, it’s a very self-limiting myth.

CBD: So if leadership isn’t an inborn quality, then what is it?

ML: Leadership is about skills and attitudes and behaviors, all of which can be learned. Even the much-vaunted charisma can be learned. Look at acting lessons. What are they but a way to train someone to connect one-on-one with everyone in an audience, to reach into each person’s heart — in short, to be charismatic? So the idea that charisma can’t be taught or learned doesn’t stand up.

Every essential leadership skill can be taught and learned.

CBD: In your experience, what are the most critical leadership skills, and how can people develop them?

ML: I’d start with adaptability. There’s a lot of talk about leadership requiring vision, but a too-strong vision can pose a problem. People who are passionate about a vision and overly committed to it tend to be inflexible and unable to adapt to changing circumstances.

Adaptability and flexibility are more critical to effective leadership than vision. People who excel at leadership balance realism with optimism. They can turn a keen, analytic eye to reality yet remain positive and hopeful. And then when circumstances change, they can recognize this and accommodate it.

A related capability is a tolerance for uncertainty and conflict. Exercising leadership can be anxiety-producing; it requires bearing up in the face of ambiguity and chaos. To build up your tolerance, practice holding steady in the face of circumstances that make you feel uncomfortable. For example, we once worked with a CEO who spent months learning to tolerate conflict among his top team. In the past, to avoid such conflict, he’d take the work off their shoulders and decide issues for them. He had to continually remind himself that the conflict was a necessary part of letting them work through difficult issues on their own.

CBD: What other skills are essential to effective leadership?

ML: Relationship skills, as opposed to specific professional expertise. Many people move up the organizational hierarchy because they’ve been really terrific at bringing their particular area of expertise to bear on business situations. Then, when they accede to senior roles, they can stumble because they try to apply this same professional expertise to a problem that really requires emotional intelligence and savvy people skills.

I once worked with the CFO of a major global company. Although he was part of the top team, he thought of himself as a technical expert whose role was to provide specific expertise, period. So, for instance, when discussions ranged beyond financials — as they often did — he didn’t jump into the discussion and engage with his peers.

We worked to help him build up both the tactical skills and the courage to take a more robust role in the top team meetings. He started off by running low-risk experiments such as commenting on issues on the fringe of his CFO responsibilities but beyond his apparent technical expertise. He’d plan his interventions in advance, then we’d debrief afterward. Slowly, but steadily, he began to be more comfortable operating outside his narrow expertise. His subordinates started looking to him for mentoring and advice about their own leadership skills and professional growth. And his colleagues on the top team began to value his judgment on a wide range of issues. He also took on assignments that were outside his bailiwick.

Leadership is about both will and skill. This CFO had the core skills in place, but because he didn’t recognize this, he held back. If fact, we find that people are prevented from being effective leaders as much by psychological constraints as by an absence of actual skills.

CBD: How can people cultivate the relationship skills that lie at the heart of good leadership?

ML: It is about designing and running low-risk experiments. These could include talking to selected colleagues in advance and taking their temperatures before raising a difficult issue at a meeting. Then, during the meeting, it might mean raising the issue as a question and in the spirit of curiosity rather than staking out a defined position.

It also requires nurturing the skill we call “Getting on the Balcony.” In the midst of an interaction you step mentally away from it to take a distanced view. The point is to look for patterns in your own behavior and in the exchange that are not visible from the dance floor.

Leadership is an experimental art. You can’t learn it from just reading a book or taking a class any more than you can learn to ride a bike by reading instructions. You’ve got to experiment and practice; you’ve got to learn it while you’re doing it.

CBD: Anything else that’s an essential element of the leadership toolbox?

ML: If I had to choose just one more skill, I’d say it’s the ability to let others take the reins. People in top jobs win points from their subordinates for solving their problems for them. That dependency can be dangerously seductive — solving problems for others can too easily become part of your identity. But if you define yourself that way, you’re not going to have any time for higher-level work. And if you don’t ever let your direct reports take the reins, they won’t develop their own leadership competencies.

Let me illustrate. We were hired by the founder and CEO of a fast-growing services company. Morale had become a huge problem as the company had grown. The CEO wasn’t having any fun — he complained that he spent all his time “hand holding” — and his top people weren’t having fun either. The CEO’s leadership skills hadn’t evolved at pace with the company’s growth, and everyone was suffering because of this.

So we concentrated on helping the CEO alter his relationship with his top team. We helped him to bring the rest of his team squarely into the decision-making process. We also encouraged him to be less available for one-on-one interactions so that both he and his direct reports would have less opportunity to fall back into the “hand holding” behavior that was holding everyone back.
As the CEO grew more confident in his ability to step back and refuse to solve others’ problems, his top team members’ confidence also increased. They assumed higher-level roles, leaving the CEO with even more time and energy to devote to his most important task, setting the company’s direction. Morale improved significantly.

And with the whole organization functioning much more effectively and efficiently, the bottom line improved, too.

CBD: If you had only three minutes in which to coach someone on exercising leadership more effectively, what would you tell her?

ML: Leadership and purpose go hand in hand. Leadership entails risk — that’s why we don’t see more of it. So a critical first step in becoming better at leadership is to clarify your purpose. What are you willing to take risks on behalf of?

Maybe you’ve decided that sacrificing short-term success is necessary for reaching longer-term goals. Or maybe your purpose is to forge a unified culture from the idiosyncratic, deeply embedded cultures of two companies that came together in a merger. Whatever your purpose, you have to define it clearly before you’ll be able to take risks to make it a reality and before you’ll be able to help others to do the same.

A second step would be to practice “Getting on the Balcony” to assess your own resources and constraints. What advantages does your role give you? What disadvantages? How are you understood by the other players in the system? What are your predictable responses that enable others to undermine your interventions? What behaviors do you need to nurture to broaden your tool kit?

With self-awareness, you can create a plan of action. You can identify what leadership skills you need to start practicing and stretching.

Reprinted by permission of Harvard Management Update. From “Leadership Ability — You Either Have It or You Don’t” by Christina Bielaszka-DuVernay, Volume 12, Number 4. Copyright© 2007 by the Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation; all rights reserved.