To improve, should leaders focus primarily on building on their strengths or on correcting their weaknesses?

RUSS S. MOXLEY

Moxley is director of nonprofit initiatives and a senior fellow at CCL in Greensboro. His background includes more than twenty-five years of diverse experience in management training and organizational development. He holds an M.Th. degree from Southern Methodist University.

One of the questions that has most fascinated and befuddled leaders and leadership theorists alike over the years is, Are leaders born or can leadership capacity be developed? In other words, Are leaders determined principally by nature or by nurture?

If one believes the latter answer to be true, a second set of questions arises: How can leadership capacity be developed? Which types of experiences are developmental? And how can we learn from them?

Those who believe that leaders are born assume that only certain individuals have the gift of leadership—the natural talents and strengths needed to perform the tasks essential to effective leadership. According to this argument, these strengths and talents can be nurtured and honed, but they cannot be developed if they are not there to begin with. As singer and actress Pearl Bailey told Newsweek in 1967, “With God-given talent, you just touch it up once in a while.” The challenge for people who have the gift of leadership is to first of all become aware of their natural talents and strengths and then to decide how best to use those attributes to be the most effective leaders they can be.

Then there is the camp that believes people can and must go against their grain to develop the skills and perspectives that don't come naturally to them but are necessary to be an effective leader. The assumption in this argument is that not everyone has all the strengths needed to be effective in the variety of roles that today's leaders play. For example, someone may have a tremendous natural ability to articulate a vision in a compelling way but not be similarly inclined to listen intently to the aspirations of others, as a leader must do to be optimally effective. More than thirty years of research and practice at CCL has demonstrated that people can and do learn new leadership skills and perspectives over the course of their careers. There are developmental experiences that continue to shape people—from job challenges to personal hardships, from interactions with coaches and mentors to feedback-intensive workshops.

So which answer is correct? Should leaders focus primarily on building on their strengths, or should they learn to do better the things that don't come naturally? I believe both answers are correct; it is the question that is off the mark. Rather than present the issue as either/or, it should present it as both/and. The challenge is not to concentrate on identifying and playing to one's strengths or on improving in the areas in which one is weak but rather to embrace the difference and do both. Leaders should discern and use their gifts and develop the new skills and perspectives needed to be as effective as possible.

What too often happens is that they don't do both. Some people, ingrained with the belief that anything worthwhile must be earned, don't acknowledge or embrace their natural strengths. They put more value on the skills they acquired through willpower and sweat than on those that always came easily to them.

Or the opposite happens. People internalize their strengths, learn to use them effectively, and pay little or no attention to their weaknesses. They fail to realize that capacities that are strengths at one point in their lives and careers can become weaknesses at other junctures, making it important to keep an eye out for weaknesses and address them.

The simple answer is that leaders should identify, internalize, and build on their strengths and sometimes go against the grain to improve in the areas in which they are weak.