Are leaders born or made?

Or are they both?

You see we all arrive on this planet being born which mean ALL leaders are born, but can they be made or is it a genetic and or personality traits that creates the leader?

Many studies have shown there are various leadership styles, often dependent on the persons values and beliefs. A school of thought from practitioners of the Strength Deployment Inventory dictates that all leadership can be broken down into what is known as the Motivational Value system, or the MVS for brevity.

The MVS is made up of all our life’s experiences, interactions, values and beliefs up to the age of 8 years old. Once we reach that golden age it has been said our internal guidance system on what makes us feel good and motivated and what leads us into conflict is formed!

With that said leadership training often looks at the values of the leader and how they can be the guiding light on how he uses them to exert influence. You see if the leader has a natural tendency to aim for success and recognition their style might mirror that when looking to encourage others to follow.

However, this will lead to conflict if others have ‘differing values’.

The key to great leadership is to be able to recognise those values in others and use language and behavior to reflect them back.

An example would clarify this for you.

Imagine the scenario …

The leader wants to encourage his team to act and complete a task in a set time and speaks to his team with the following:

“Ok guys and girls, let’s pull our socks up, roll our sleeves up and get stuck into those cold calls now. I want everyone to make 30 calls in the next ½ hr … our target is 2 appointments each. Right, let’s do it now!”

When first read the above might make sense to some of you if your value system is based in recognition and success where targets rate high on your list of priorities?

But … the challenge is this.

If team members have more of an altruistic or logical value system, they may respond differently.

The altruistic value would see the above as too aggressive and ‘not nice’. They would feel more inclined to carry out the task if the wording was more aimed at ‘encouraging others’, for example:

“Thanks everyone for taking the time to come to the meeting today. I’m looking for help on achieving our sales targets. Remember our products have been developed to help people improve the quality of their lives, so the more people that buy our product the more people we are helping. Let’s aim for 30 calls today and 2 appointments?”

However, what happens if your team members are more logical in the value system?

Just think about the words and phrases they use to describe their daily actions and incorporate them into your messages.

It’s possible they use a combination of facts, figures and specific strategies to achieve their outcomes.

It might go something like this …

“Having analysed the marketplace and customer base it has become apparent that 73% of them buy the ABC Model once they have been given all of the information that’s important to them. Our strategy today is to contact those customers who have not yet bought to update them on the specific information they requested and to formulate a plan to enable them to go through the buying process we know that works. The number of customers for each of you is 30 and the appointment rate is 2 each”.

The trick is to incorporate either one or all three of the above in your presentations and conversations as a leader to use what is known as conversational hypnosis.

The ability to weave hypnotic suggestions, based on the team’s values, to motivate them to take action…. This of course can also be used when face to face selling or sending sales messages via email or text!

Success Is an Inside Job

No More Excuses

Be Outrageous Now!