Many a times, we've heard people said that, for instance leadership is more of an "art" than "science". Whether it is "nature" or "nurture". So are you born to be a leader or can you be trained to become one?
I believe it is both an art and a science.
My interpretation is as follows: its first a science than an art.
Especially in the area of "leadership", if you look at the number of titles on the topic, you'd be overwhelmed. If people are born leaders, then it would be a complete waste of time to read such books. Its either you are or you're not. As simple as that.
However, leadership can be taught; to a large extent.
First, one can acquire an awareness about leadership. Beginning with an awareness helps in understanding what leadership is and what it is not. Many people can tell you that leaders and managers are different. For example, leaders set direction for an organization, while managers ensure that the strategies are executed according to plan.
Next, after gaining an awareness, one can then pick up a certain skill-set of leaders. For instance, we can learn how to set directions, how to come up with a plan. We can also learn some soft-skills like people skills, EQ, how to listen to your people. These constitute a series of learnings, which you can learn from reading a book, to attending a course, to even perhaps watching how other leaders do things.
Now, having learnt all these skills, the next step is to be able to apply them. Knowing alone is just not enough. We must put it into practice. Find an opportunity to practice it. Or perhaps set a goal such as during this week I will practice what I've learnt about "how to listen".
Here, it is where the organization can help. Perhaps, if you have sent your staff on a leadership course, you may want to create the opportunity for your staff to practice those skills. Or perhaps, you want to set aside time to review and coach your staff in this area. You may also get your staff to reflect upon his actions to see how he has applied those skills and to what success.
Of course this could take many forms. A good practice would be to adopt this four-step approach of (1) identifying the opportunities or platforms for the staff to practice or apply those skills. (2) to allow the staff to develop his mastery of those skills. (3) then there must be some ways to evaluate his development of the skills. And finally (4) to acknowledge his progress thus far.
In order to carry this out effectively, specific goals and objectives must be established and agreed upon by the staff and yourself. And certainly, a time frame must be set or it could result in a never ending process.
Now, up until now we have been talking about the science part, where creating the awareness, acquiring the skill-set, and providing the platform for application. From here on will be where the art component will kick in. Much like going from conscious competence to unconscious competence.
How long does this take? It depends. For some it could be faster than others. According to Malcolm Gladwell, in his recent book "Outliers", his thesis of the 10,000 hours of practice is what it takes for someone to go from good to great.
While that is true, I believe it only offers one side of the story. Besides, practice does not make perfect, always. If one has been practising the skills wrongly, then even with the 10,000 hours put in will only make this person really good at being bad.
In order to understand how this can bring out the "art" component requires insights into the person's beliefs, values, attitudes, and identity. Now, I am proposing that unless one truly believes in what he is doing, no number of hours will make a person great.
As such, even through one practice till it becomes an unconscious competence; unless it is aligned to his beliefs and identity he will never become great. Or make it an art.
If you study the lives of great artists, engineers, writers, musicians, teachers; you will find that first and foremost they believe in what they are doing and most importantly, they also see it as their life's work!
Many Japanese great masters spend a lifetime just focusing on the one thing that they do and do it to excellence, if not perfection. And their ability to be creative is just unbelievable.
One such example is O'Sensei Morihei Ueshiba. After spending many years training various forms of martial arts, O'Sensei created a form of martial arts called Aikido. Each time O'Sensei learnt a new martial arts form, he was able to to synthesize what he has learnt with what he already know. Hence making his existing knowledge of martial arts more effective, in terms of executing the moves.
However, O'Sensei did not stop there. In fact, he later on created a new art form called Aikido, where it is now practiced all over the world. And the success with Aikido, I believe, was also the philosophy. Which was what's aligned to O'Sensei's beliefs and identity, such as one should be in harmony with the opponent, and to love the opponent. These were what O'Sensei believed in and also lived by it. And because he believed it and lived by it, he has become synonymous with the philosophy.
Of course he did his 10,000 hours, no doubt.
Hence, to become good at something, be it leadership or Aikido, one can acquire the skills through practice. That's the science part. There are various avenues to acquire those skills; not just knowledge.
But to become great at something, to master the art of it, one must align it to his beliefs and identity. To do that, it requires a whole lot of soul searching. So, to become great, I believe each and everyone of us must first identify what our life's passion is going to be. Or some may say, what's your life's mission or purpose.
For those who wish to embark on this journey; I strongly urge you to read "Purpose Driven Life" by Rick Warren.
Your friend,
Melvyn Tan
(Sent from my Blackberry Bold)
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