Are Leaders Born or Can you Grow into a Great Leader?

Yes it is true that some people are born with natural leadership skills, which initially makes them better leaders. The truth though, is that all leadership skills are learnable and with consistency, determination and a lifelong commitment to on-going growth, anyone can increase their leadership ability. If any of your goals requires you to work with other people, in order to achieve them. Then it is crucial that you commit to grow your leadership ability, so that you can lead these people as successfully as possible.

The results you will be able to realise, will be limited by the ceiling which exists around your ability to lead and influence other people. Maurice and Dick were very effective at building systems and managing a single restaurant. Their efforts made them very wealthy in their own community. They were however not able to grow their concept of a fast food business much beyond 10 stores. They were unwilling to commit to grow their leadership skills and so once they had reached the ceiling of the leadership ability they remained stuck and could not grow their business any further.

Ray Croc on the other hand had spent his entire life growing his leadership ability. He was in his fifties and owned a small milkshake making business, which supplied machines to the McDonald brothers. He had grown sufficiently as a leader and was ready to lead McDonalds when you started to work with the brothers in 1954. He took an incredible concept that was limited to only a few restaurants in 1954 and with his learnt leadership ability he quickly grew the hamburger chain into a world leader in the hamburger business. There are over 32000 stores all around the world today.

Ray Croc had spent his time leading up until his fifties committed to growing his leadership ability. When he took over the hamburger chain he had grown sufficiently to allow him to lead the business. He gradually led the business to new levels of success with his leadership, exceeding even his own expectations. If you want to grow your business and that growth depends on the input from other people, the only way to make that growth possible is to commit to your on-going growth as a leader. You must effectively raise the ceiling on your own leadership ability.
The first concept around your leadership ability, which you need to improve, is your ability to influence other people. Without influence, you will never be an effective leader or have the ability to encourage people to offer their best performance. Your ability to influence people is something that you can learn. Your growth as a leader will not happen in a day, but is rather something that will happen daily, as you commit to keep growing every day.
• As you grow and expand personally, you will firstly grow your character. This will help you with the first part of influencing others. Your character reflects who you are and as you know who you are speaks volumes to people about you. When people see you reflecting good character, they are willing to follow you and your ability to influence their behaviour is dramatically increased.
• The second crucial element around improving your influence is your ability to build real meaningful connection with people. When you show your real commitment to people, you always act out of integrity and you always deliver on what you say you will do. People will over time grow to trust you and they will connect with you.
• The third part in the process of growing your influence is a commitment to keep improving your knowledge base. As your knowledge grows, so too will your ability to influence people, through the dissemination of the right knowledge at the right time.
• The fourth element is something you cannot buy, it is experience. Experience comes from your never ending commitment to continually learn all the lessons life has to offer and then to use these to build a strong base of experiential knowledge. Your level of experience and knowledge are really powerful tools, which will serve you well when you are attempting to positively influence people.
• The final two parts to the influence puzzle come in the form of your capacity to demonstrate your ability to succeed and your track record around what you as a leader have achieved in the past. Both of these take time to develop, so stay committed to learn all the lessons life has to offer and remain focused on growing yourself as a leader.
• As you grow in all these areas, you level of influence will grow too. Leading people and encouraging them to deliver their best is one of the most rewarding things you will ever do. Stay committed to growing as a leader and you and everyone you lead will benefit in the long run.

http://www.andrewhorton.co.za