There is a naturally occurring scintillation with the question “are leaders born or made?” This is a distant cousin to: which came first, the chicken or the egg? I have been asked many times, in what way is leadership created: birth or teaching? Do we try to hire them or grow them?

This question usually comes from our desire to manipulate others and our insecurity in our own freedom and identity. Either we want to assemble a cadre of loyal effective leaders in the same way we select cuts of beef from a butcher’s meat locker, or we are wondering if we personally have “the stuff” of which leaders are made, or, perhaps we are perplexed as to whether an ineffective leader with whom we are interacting will ever become effective. Despite our accompanying cadre of dysfunctions, these are still valid concerns stemming from appropriate anxieties.

Leaders are not born. Get over it. There is no Santa Clause. Get over that one too. Yes, some of us have a greater natural predisposition to leadership, but the behaviors must be learned. What we learn from history is that we do not learn from history. Kings were “born” to kings and throughout history, the misplaced hope for a great king was hit or miss; mostly miss. Leader-birth theory and practice doesn’t hold water; it only holds together the weakest form of hierarchy called patriarchy. Wishing leaders to be born is the wish for someone else to come solve my problems; it is the wish to live vicariously through someone else’s life because living my own life is too painful; it is a defense against personal power, freedom, and accountability. Please stop it. Live your life, not the life of others.

Yes, you have “the stuff”, the raw materials, of which leaders are made. Yes, you are trapping value in your life and the lives of those around you through your ineffective behavioral patterns and assumptions. So, the lifelong axiom “you have it and you’re either hiding or misusing it” is one we all would be better off embracing for the long haul. Yes, you will increase effectiveness faster by changing yourself rather than attempting to force change on others. Yes, others probably realize your weaknesses faster than you do, so listening non-defensively would help you. And yes, the best way to learn how to help other struggling leaders is to learn how to help yourself.

So, leaders are not born, and you are a leader. Now get this: leaders are not made either. Trying to make someone else into anything is futile. Manipulation of others is a defense against living your own life fully. Stop trying to change others; start changing yourself. People don’t want you to change them, and you do not want others to change you. These are inherently free human beings we are talking about, not hunks of clay you get to mold. You can no sooner hold back the tide. You will do better molding yourself through your choices, and even better when you stop trying so hard to stop trying so hard. People are not means to your end; they are ends in and of themselves. Don’t bitch that there are waves in the ocean; choose to enjoy navigating them. Land here: leaders cannot be made or taught; leaders learn. The question whether leaders are born or made is a weak question. A better question would be “in what ways do leaders learn enhanced behaviors? This question challenges the thin teacher-centric presupposition that “we” have what “they” need. This question gives life to powerful possibility divorced from invasive audacity. The best work we can do in this regard is to embrace our irrelevance and facilitate the learning of leaders. We cannot be the oracle for anyone else but ourselves. Create a hospitable and stimulating environment that optimizes their growth much as you would create a well-cultivated garden. You don’t get a flower to grow by pulling on it; you don’t grow leaders through conventional teaching methodology. Encourage them. Don’t micromanage them. Let them lead. Don’t teach them; facilitate their learning.

Many times I find organizations stumbling around this unarticulated strategy regarding leaders: “train the trainable if the desirable are unavailable”. These two assumingly separate strategies actually form one effective strategy when combined. Find the best talent you can because it’s almost always cheaper and faster than growing it. Continually develop all the talent you have and you have a chance at keeping the best of them. The problem is we assume that means teaching. Please resist the urge to teach. The problem with teaching leadership is that leaders naturally resist unrequested instruction. Teaching is invasive input. Learning is sustainable output. Learning is self-chosen, life-changing growth. Teaching is the attempt at shallow, coercive, cosmetic compliance. Learning is self-inflicted change. Change is the painful path to growth and blessing. All enduring change and learning involves choice, discomfort, vision, and movement. All organizational change is preceded by authentic personal change. Leadership cannot be taught. Leadership is learned. Learning is a leader’s lifelong journey. It only ends when we do. If learning ends early, so do we. It is helpful to grapple with this question: what am I choosing to learn? It might be even more helpful to struggle within a similar question: what learning do I prefer to avoid?

William Butler Yeats asked “how can one tell the dancer from the dance?” Great question. Leadership is not position or results. Leadership is identity and action. Leadership is not transaction and manipulation. Leadership is relationship. The quality of leadership is not dependant on outcomes, execution, or results. Better litmus tests would be the level of voluntary follower engagement, the extent of coordinated and convergent effort, or the increment of synergistic cooperation among followers. Managers love to measure and deconstruct things. Most managers are better measurers than they are leaders. For many managers, measurement is meaning, but for many others measurement has dangerously eclipsed meaning. It is threatening and irritating for those who depend on measurement for meaning and identity when they run into things that defy measurement. It is tempting and self-protective to say that those immeasurable things are not meaningful. This trap of measurement-dependent significance dilutes life. Regarding the measurement of leadership, I offer a contrary thought: to measure leadership is to dilute and confuse it. We would be tempted to say the same thing about love. We easily assume that we cannot measure the power and extent of love. At times, love, relationship, and even leadership seem to defy logic. Physicist Fritjof Capra said that it was impossible to measure a relationship. In fact, the ability to measure something does not dictate its reality (contrary to some managers’ assumptions). Love and relationship are more real than a quarter’s profits. Hence, an unhealthy obsession with measurement displaces the immeasurable value of unquantifiable things such as relationship, love, identity, and leadership. I believe that leadership cannot be measured effectively. And that’s OK. Somehow you will survive. Leadership is both who you are and what you do. So, who are you? And, what defines you?

Truth embraces scrutiny. Truth is not manufactured or manipulated. You do not help truth by protecting it. Truth is open and vulnerable. Truth is not created; your awakening reveals it. Managed truth is hidden truth, more hidden to the one who manages it. Truth cannot be trapped and does lend itself well to be controlled. Truth is not part of your kingdom, not a subject in control. Truth does not live in a box you created, to be removed when convenient. Truth pierces your soul. Truth brings regenerative pain and change. Flawless leaders do not waste time managing truth, they commit to aligning their lives with it. Is truth the fire in which you burn or the waves upon which you sail?

Truth is not easily allowed in organizations. Avoiding truth’s pain and manipulating others to think, “we are who we pretend to be” are strong unspoken values. In organizations, we collude with hidden forces that counter truth. We all nod nonverbally, “Yes” around the table and the leader assumes that agreement is commitment. (Not!) No one speaks up and disagrees so the leader assumes that everyone is on her page. (Think again!) We are not physically absent; we “put in our time” so the leader assumes that we are productive. (Not even close!) We attend the right meetings, listen in on the right conference calls, copy the appropriate people on the right emails, and daily apply a thin coat of cosmetic compliance. Faux-followers do all these things to defend against truth, accountability, independent thought, clearly articulated opinion, emotional maturity, and clarified commitment. Most leaders encourage follower acquiescence, but disguise it with the cloak of “execution”. Thus they trap value within their organizations, accepting disengaged behaviors in the midst of their own meaningless motion.

Flawless leaders would beg to differ, and beg you to differ with them. Flawless leaders value and invite disagreement. They find safety in dispute. They praise and empower resistance. Flawless leaders have learned that dissent is not divisive – it actually engenders commitment. Flawless leaders embrace challenge and opposing opinion as interesting and significant; they feel less accurate without adequate objection and protest. When followers are not comfortable speaking their disruptive opinions and healthy debate is absent, flawless leaders reflexively know that trust is low and effectiveness is in jeopardy. Flawless leaders look at their followers as the first line of defense in protecting themselves and the larger organization from their leadership mistakes and misdirection. In the absence of truth, followers become incompetent drones hopelessly careening near the misbegotten leaders they look to blame when things go awry. Flawless leaders value the fully engaged commitment that can only come from truthful freethinking debate.

What are your reflex reactions to disagreement and dissent? In what ways do you try forcing compliance and execution? How well are you aligned with truth?

Leaders often choose blindness to unseen matters. Consciously or unconsciously, that which is not task accomplishment is too often ignored. Years ago, when I was contemplating a key strategic move in my own organization, a trusted advisor asked me why I was hesitant to operate in the world of the unseen, “God operates there; why shouldn’t you?” This feedback helped to expose my unhelpful assumptions (which I was unconsciously choosing) that would have eventually reduce my firm’s value. Since then, I have found the same advice applies extensively to leadership. Leaders often avoid the unseen.

There are many layers of the human system in which we lead: the most blatant is the content – the “what” we are working on, the area where most leaders start and most get stuck. Some leaders multi-task and also work on the process, the “how” we are working together. This applies to both the content and the efficiency and effectiveness of the human system, the extent to which we optimally interrelate. Still, another layer of leadership is the level of paradigm, the basis for action and reaction, the “why” we do what we do and how we do it. Discerning, understanding, and leading paradigms are “career critical” for flawless leaders. Paradigms cannot be seen, and like the eighty percent of the iceberg that is beneath the surface, they comprise the vast majority of the arena for leadership. Paradigms give us clues to the various meanings and purposes that resonate in followers. Flawless leaders are not blind. They see the entire arena of leadership, including the normally unseen areas. Flawless leaders help to give sight to the blind by articulating the unseen, yet important. Flawless leaders do not allow task execution to eclipse their full leadership calling and responsibility.

In a large company’s lunch area I overheard two employees talking about an ambitious Vice President, Howard. One employee asked the other, “Do you know what the difference between Howard and God is?” The other, obviously in on the joke, replied, “Yes, God doesn’t think He’s Howard.” I instantly recognized Howard’s classic leader flaw: unknowingly trapping value through blind ambition. Our ambition to be significant and relevant can be our most limiting factor as a leader. In learning to reject blind ambition, flawless leaders embrace their irrelevance by submission to worthy purpose. Consequently they appear endearing, not arrogant. People are drawn to them instead of repelled away from them. And they engender full engagement instead of witty quips behind their backs in the break room. Flawless leaders are living proof that real leadership is not commerce and compromise but deep relationship and meaningful service.

There are unending ways in which we all limit our potential and trap the release of our value in the world, but leaders commonly default-choose failure like Howard did, by opting for self-protection wrapped in ambition. For leaders to avoid certain failure, the trick is they must do that which they strive so strenuously against: surrender. Leaders fail when they refuse to surrender to purpose, for what they haven’t learned is that surrender is more powerful than conquest. Conquest alone cannot bring significance; only contribution offers the possibility of significance. Conquest takes; contribution gives. Conquest destroys; contribution creates. There is always a lavish generosity resulting from a leader’s powerful surrender to meaningful purpose. The question with which flawless leaders must wrestle constantly is “what purpose is worthy of my surrender?”