Leaders Are Made Not Born

Years ago my firm was hired by the SVP of North American Sales at Oracle to develop a custom leadership program for 45 of his top leaders. I was assigned to the project as the lead consultant. 

Early on I interviewed the SVP to learn about why he wanted to do this and what his objectives were and to answer the why question, he shared the following story:

He was at an event and he was seated at a table next to Paul O’Neill. Mr. O’Neill was the former CEO of Alcoa, and during his 12-year tenure had delivered remarkable revenue and share price growth. Then in 2001, President Bush tapped him and he became the 72nd Treasury Secretary of the United States. 

During a conversation about leadership Paul asked him, “do you know where they teach leadership?” To which the Oracle SVP responded yes, “college.” Without hesitation, Mr. O’Neill responded, “there are only four colleges that teach leadership and they are called military academies.” He then went on to say, “if you want to grow leaders you will have to develop them yourself.” This was my client's impetus for hiring our firm.

Then I asked, “how will you know we have been successful?” To which he responded, “I’ll just know.” At the time, I was frustrated by that response. I have later come to realize that he was in fact correct. He would know by observing who his leaders were being as leaders. Poor leadership is observable, so too is great leadership. 

Too many people believe leaders are born. While there are some unicorns in business, government, non-profit, and other fields like science who seem to be remarkable leaders, I say even those are made not born. 

Herb Kelleher, co-founder and 20-year CEO of Southwest Airlines, might be seen as one of those unicorns. He built a remarkably successful business in an industry with built-in  challenges. The industry is capital-intensive, with planes and gate fees. It has variabilities they can’t control like the cost of jet fuel, and weather which impacts their ability to deliver their service. It has high labor costs and a perishable product; when a plane flies with empty seats, it is a missed revenue opportunity which cannot be recouped. 

Herb was a remarkable CEO and built a highly successful business. In reading about his business philosophy I learned that he credits some of his philosophy to the teaching of his mother, who told him to prioritize his employees. His business philosophy was: I’ll take care of my employees and my employees will take care of our customers and our customers will take care of our bottom line. I don’t know of many CEOs operating with that philosophy in the late 20th century, let alone today. 

Leaders are made not born.

The United States has numerous private schools, historically designed for young men to be developed as leaders. While I’m sure many were successful it also was for the privileged class, which was on full display in the 1992 drama, Scent of a Woman. In this clip, Al Pacino defends his aid, a Baird student, and points to leadership qualities this young man was exhibiting. I hope you enjoy this scene as much as I enjoyed the movie.      

I was also hired by a 78-year-old man of a privately-held real estate development company to do succession planning. He was seeking someone to replace him as CEO and his COO (who was 69 years old). After interviewing eight likely candidates, including his son, I made the recommendation that he choose between one of two people for CEO. I shared my first choice and then suggested the one he did not select along with a third person be named as Presidents, one to cover the east and the other to cover the west. 

His son wasn’t one of my three recommended candidates. As I delivered my recommendation, I communicated that he could still represent the family's financial interests without being the CEO. I then went on to say that publicly traded companies do not confuse ownership with leadership. I later learned that he did not take my counsel and he promoted his son to CEO. When they sold the company, his son was fired the day the transaction took place. Apparently, I was not the only one who did not see him as an appropriate leader for the organization. As my Oracle SVP pointed out, leadership is observable and it is not born. 

I’m sharing these stories with you for two reasons. Regardless if you are running a private company or a public company there are two important lessons.

As Paul O’Neill pointed to, if you want strong leaders, you have to develop them, and yes you have to invest money to do so. GE President Ralph Cordiner understood this better than anyone when in the mid-1950’s he decided the biggest limitation to the company’s growth was its roster of managers. So in 1956 GE bought a parcel of land about an hour north of New York City and established its Crotonville management training center. 

Many senior leaders of some of the largest Fortune 500 companies were ex-GE employees and got their training at GE’s Crotonville management training center. For those of you who say I don’t want to invest in people for them to leave, I say if you don’t invest in people they will leave. If you do invest, they will stay longer, develop other leaders in your business and deliver value far greater then your investment. It is in my opinion a no-brainer. When a CEO tells me they value their people, I ask to see their budget and specifically to see how much they have allocated for training and development. This is for me the clear indicator for how much a leader values their employees. 

Second, employee selection, especially for leaders, should be based upon a meritocracy, not where someone went to school, who they know or because of blood lines. I want people who will work hard to earn it. 

The picture with this blog is Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s plantation and was his primary residence. During our visit there we learned that he was a voracious reader. This is how he developed his leadership. He had 3 libraries. His first as a young person was destroyed in a fire. His second was 6,500 books which was sold to the government and was the nucleus of the Library of Congress. And then in his latter years he amassed another 1,600 books.   

Leaders are made not born. Stop complaining you can’t find leaders. It is your job as a leader to coach, invest in and grow leaders, including yourself. So, get to work. I can help.