Are leaders born, or are leadership behaviours learned?  A little of both, actually.  There is no doubt that certain innate characteristics, such as intelligence, are required.  Most of what makes good leaders, however, is learned.  The last decade has seen a great deal of research into how leaders are developed.

The most significant finding, and one which successful leaders immediately agree with, is that leadership is not learned in a classroom.  There is no one magic training program which will turn an average manager into a future corporate leader.  Experience is truly the best teacher:  a wide variety of challenging experiences at work (and outside of work) is the best way to develop leadership skills in an individual.  Classroom training can help, but only to address specific skill and knowledge gaps.

What are the components of any leadership development experience?  There are three:

For an experience to be developmental, it must be challenging.  Candidates must be forced to apply their knowledge and skills to a new situation, one with significant difficulties.  By pushing their abilities, leaders develop, within themselves, the tools they need to confront future challenges.  Each experience, ideally, builds on and exceeds previous experiences.  Challenge is the one key ingredient in the development of all leaders.

Development is accelerated if future leaders have a good understanding of their current attitudes and/or behaviours.  It is surprising to many managers how different their own perceptions of their behaviours is from how others perceive them.  A few lucky people have such a high emotional intelligence that they already know how others perceive them, but most people do not.  We normally recommend the use of an objective, 360-degree, behaviour-based assessment tool to enable leaders to understand their own impact on others.  With our own clients, we use the (excellent) Leadership Effectiveness Analysis from the Management Research Group in the USA.

Finally, future leaders find their development is stronger and quicker if they are given regular feedback on their progress.  Some might have particular good managers who give such feedback, others can enroll in an appropriate classroom program.  The most popular way for getting regular feedback these days is through the use of an executive coach, who can help leaders ask themselves the right questions, and steer them towards identifying areas they need to improve.

A wide variety of programs, processes and systems can be set up to facilitate leadership development based on these three ingredients.  Some examples are job expansion, cross-functional task forces, the use of a mentor, psychological counseling, coaching and job rotation.  Our page on institutionalizing leadership development lists some we have used in the past.