The ‘leading’ edge – attitude trumps skills

Of course we must develop leaders. After all, we’ve evolved to be strongly responsive to the context we’re in, and thereby people who can shape that context have a tremendous influence on us.

But given the state of leadership across the globe and decades of developing it, it’s clear that most leadership training is ineffective.

In a recent conversation with Charlie Pellerin, NASA’s former director of Astrophysics and the author of How NASA Builds Teams (life changing book!) he highlighted to me what’s wrong – most leadership training develops the wrong thing.

Let me show you why...

·         Think of someone you admire as a leader (from any walk of life)

·         Write down 4-5 qualities that make them a leader in your eyes

·         Now circle each quality if it is more about an attitude than a skill

... did you circle most as ‘attitudinal’? In fact, most things we call out as leadership qualities are attitudes.

Here’s the root cause - we train leadership skills, not attitudes.

Of course such skills (clear communication, emotional control, etc) are necessary but they are not sufficient; it’s your attitude that counts with others the most.

Raise leadership by focussing less on the leading skills and more on how your attitude is perceived.