Mark of greatness

This thought has been bugging me for the past few days and I feel I just have to get it off my chest. I have been avoiding writing articles that include people who are not my family, but I am hoping the person I will mention here will not mind. I am killing myself because it means I will have to let her into my blog to read this article, but I hope she’ll enjoy reading my articles (actually it’ll be a privilege!). Truth be told, I am a tad bit apprehensive…



I reinforced my knowledge of leadership a lot at the end of last week. It wasn’t about learning something new, but it was about getting a deeper meaning of the terms: inherent leadership and acquired leadership. There has always been a raging debate about leaders being born or made, but I have never really thought about it the way I did this weekend. I have gone through a leadership program, I have managed a leadership training program for 3 years, I have talked to people who hold leadership positions, in short I have meddled with leadership myself – and it is amazing I needed to experience what I did last Friday to give a deeper thought to leadership.


Made leaders are those who by chance or achievement find themselves in positions to lead. They may (or not) have taken courses in leadership, acquired leadership notions, are good mannered, etc. They may (or not) excel in their jobs because they apply the notions they learnt and also put to value their experiences. They make good leaders (or not) depending on the angle people judge them from. On the other hand, inherent leaders are born that way. People often say ‘there are just two types of people, those who lead, and those who follow’, and I say even when seemingly following, inherent leaders are leading. Let me explain what I mean better in the next couple of paragraphs


On Friday, there was a discussion about who will carry out a specific task in the office (a task that did not require any particular skill, so anyone could do it actually). My Country Director had a couple of options (in my opinion):


• oblige someone to do their job


• assign the job to someone else


Both options would have meant she is applying the notions of leadership – delegation, ensuring people do their tasks, team work, etc. and everyone would have praised her for being a good leader. Now here is the shocker – she chose to do the task herself! What? Yes, she did!


Every type of leader could go for the first two options, but ONLY an inherent leader would do what she did and in the way she did it, without prejudice or display of anger and frustration. I am not sure how she was feeling at that moment, but the fact that she offered to do the job so naturally, not rubbing it in people’s faces, triggered my thoughts about leadership. Even some people who will take up tasks voluntarily often do so grudgingly, and the tasks aren’t usually as far removed from their regular ones as this was from a Country Director’s job. Such humility! It did not just make her a good leader, she showed GREAT leadership! Her concern at that point was to get the job done, rather than focusing on who did the job! If only all leaders could be this way. You can’t learn something like that, you just can’t – it comes naturally, it is who the person is! That is the ultimate difference between a born leader (great leadership) and a made leader (good leadership).