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Becoming a First-Class Leader E-Zine - Issue No. 46/ August 2007

Dear Reader,

I just returned from a business trip to Beijing and it's always interesting to observe the behaviors of employees in restaurants and hotels. It gives me a good indication of China's development in the service sector which becomes increasingly important as China further progresses.

This morning, during the check-out, the first thing I noticed was that none of the people behind the desk wore a smile. Worse even, after completing the payment, the lady serving us said: "You may go now!"

Wow, this really made me speechless for a while.

What is the lesson for our clients and ourselves if we want to do longterm successful business in Mainland China? As leaders we need to pay attention to appropriate and repeated (!) training and coaching of our people. Not only that, we need to get the basics right, first. Simple things like proper manners, friendliness, dress code, etc. are often considered hygene factors, i.e. when done properly, there is no major positive impact but if neglected, there could be an important negative impact.

My biggest lesson from today's experience: Take nothing for granted in China.

Let's keep progressing!

Charlie Lang
Executive Coach and Founder of Progress-U Ltd.
Author of The Groupness Factor

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Are First-Class Leaders Born or Made?

by Charlie Lang

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“Are first-class leaders born or made?"

Participants in our leadership seminars and workshops give mixed answers. Some believe that most first-class leaders are ‘born’, others believe that leaders are ‘made’, for example through a person’s upbringing largely determining whether or not he or she is likely to become a great leader.

Of course, being an executive coach and trainer with a strong focus on developing excellent leaders, I’m somewhat biased to the belief that leaders are made and not born.

In order to overcome this bias, I will state a few well-known and less known examples of leaders who were outstandingly successful.

Mahatma Ghandi, leader of India’s independence movement

“As a young man, Mahatma Gandhi was excruciatingly shy and fearful.
He mentions how ashamed he felt that his young wife had no fear of serpents and ghosts and could go anywhere in the dark while ‘darkness was a terror for me.’
At his first very routine court case as a British-trained lawyer, he stood up to cross-examine but was so nervous, he could not speak and had to leave the room in total embarrassment.” [Source: The Olympian, by Ron Davies]

Does this sound like a born leader to you?

Darwin Smith, CEO of Kimberley Clark for over 20 years

When Darwin Smith was appointed to be the new CEO of Kimberley Clark in 1971, one of the board members told him that he lacked some qualification for the job.

At that time, Kimberley Clark, maker of Kleenex and other personal-use paper products, was a very mediocre paper manufacturer. What followed under Smith’s leadership was an impressive transformation of Kimberley Clark to become the world’s largest paper based consumer products company, even topping Procter & Gamble.

As Smith was ending two decades at the helm of Kimberly-Clark, he was asked what had driven him, what had he done to make his company so successful over time.

In the book “Good to Great” by Jim Collins, Smith reflects, "I was just trying to become qualified for the job."

Obviously, Darwin Smith realized that continuous learning was key to his enormous success as a senior leader.

Robert Bosch, Founder of Robert Bosch GmbH

In 1886, a 25 year old man by the name of Robert Bosch founded a company. This company was to face several near bankruptcies over the following 10 years or so. Sounds like a born leader to you?

The many years of oftentimes painful learning would later pay-off. Robert Bosch lead his company to international fame. Today the company has over 260,000 employees worldwide.

What all these three leaders have in common is that they all had to overcome major adversities.

For example, Mahatma Ghandi experienced massive humiliations and suppression in both South-Africa and India which ignited his deep desire to learn effective public speaking and to develop leadership skills.

Another commonality among the three is a deep passion for their mission.

An example is Robert Bosch’s passion for his mission to prove that a company need not harshly exploit workers in order to grow successfully. He was known to have fought injustices against industrial workers in the late 19th century and early 20th century.

What about talent?

There is a saying that success is made of 10% talent and 90% sweat.

Research on top sports people show that many of them actually have suboptimal physical preconditions (such as bone structure, joint geometry, etc.) but have developed effective strategies to overcome such weaknesses.

Based on my research and experience, I strongly believe that certain leadership talent is merely a starting condition, but not the cause for great leadership. Mediocre leadership talent combined with hard work and extensive learning certainly leads to more effective leadership than great leadership talent with no significant learning.

This seems to be true not only for leadership but for pretty much any discipline, be it in sports, music or management.

Let me close by quoting one of the most successful football coaches in US history:

“Leaders aren't born, they are made.
And they are made just like anything else, through hard work.
And that's the price we'll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal.”

- Vincent Lombardi

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