Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes
Sometimes I look at leadership a lot like I look at art. I may not be able to explain exactly why a particular painting is good art, but I know it when I see it. The reverse is also true. When I see a bad painting (here I’m thinking of Elvis Painted on Black Velvet) I it is not good art. Leadership tends to work the same way. Some folks make leadership look effortless and are really effective leaders. Others work hard at it and still couldn’t lead their way out of a paper bag.
I was reading Wally Bock’s post, “Can Leadership Be Taught?” and it got me thinking. While I’m still up in the air about the effectiveness of teaching leadership (even though I’ve done it for a number of years), I am convinced that leadership can be learned. I certainly believe that in order to become effective leaders we also need to be lifelong learners. But learning is something we do as individuals it is not something that is done to us. There are different ways that we learn how to be leaders.
How do we learn leadership?
We generally learn how to be a leader from three main sources. First we can learn about leadership by reading books, magazines, journals (even blogs like those listed in this post), or taking courses and workshops. Second we can learn about leadership by observing others lead. The third way we can learn about leadership is the trial by fire method of learning from our own leadership experiences.
Learning by Reading
Learning about leadership through reading or workshops to me is more academic. We get to read about how others have led or about theories of what makes for effective leadership. My concern with this type of learning about leadership is that it is academic. Being able to read about leadership is one thing; being able to turn that learning into practice is something entirely different. Since so much of leadership needs to be situational, it is oftentimes hard to read about a leadership technique that is new to us and has worked so well for others when our situation doesn’t lend itself to that particular technique. In fact, when we try using a technique that isn’t suited to our situation it can backfire and cause bigger issues. Sometimes the best way to learn how to be an effective leader in our own setting is to watch how those around us lead.
Learning by Observing
Observing others lead is more experiential. We get to experience the consequences of others leading, both good and bad. This experience with other leaders may come from being led by others or by watching how someone else leads from afar. This could be someone in our own organization, a colleague outside of the organization, or even someone that we admire as a leader but have never met. We learn leadership by observing others and selecting the things we want to emulate from effective leaders and discarding the things we don’t want to emulate from ineffective leaders. It’s sort of like when we are growing up and we experience how our parents are treating us and we vow never to act that way with our own children. As with most things, we can improve by focusing on the strengths of effective leadership and not focusing on the weaknesses of ineffective leadership. Keeping the good stuff and staying away from the bad stuff.
Learning by Doing
The third, and in my opinion most powerful way to learn about leadership is to, as the old Nike campaign said, just do it. Make no mistake, leadership is hard work and takes an inordinate amount of energy to sustain. Certainly no one likes to learn by trial and error because it takes time and is frustrating and tedious, so learning leadership along the way takes time and energy. It is hard work! But learning leadership by doing it can have much more lasting results in the development of our leadership skills. But, when we use this trial and error method, we need to be sure that as we learn we are constantly reflecting on how we are doing; what works and what doesn’t work so that over time we are improving as leaders.
While I certainly think the most powerful way to learn leadership is by doing, each of these three ways I describe are useful and have their place in our leadership development. So what have you found to be the most helpful way to learn to be a more effective leader?
