Leaders – Born, Made or Learned?
February 10, 2009 by Sally E Smith
The journey of leadership started for me when I was in the 8th grade. My gym teacher, Mrs. Brown, had a conversation with me that would start me on a life-long search of understanding and insight into leadership.
I was the captain of an undefeated volleyball team. This particular day Mrs. Brown asked that I change positions with the captain of a team that had never won a game. She then had us play a game against each other. To everyone’s surprise the team I was coaching was successful in defeating my undefeated team.
Mrs. Brown pulled me to the side afterward and told me that she wanted to demonstrate an important lesson. She said that I had demonstrated leadership as captain. She told me that people can have strengths and skills but they need leadership to show them how to use them to work together. Mrs. Brown encouraged me to continue to develop my leadership strengths.
Throughout the years that followed, I remembered that day and felt that I was somehow on a treasure hunt to understand its meaning. My evolution of understanding leadership has lead me through chronological phases of understanding leadership.
- Leadership understanding phase 1 -Something You Go Do
- Leadership understanding phase 2 – Something You Are Called
- Leadership understanding phase 3 – Something You Are
- Leadership understanding phase 4 – Something You Become
And my discovery of having worked with thousands of individuals of all walks and positions in life, is that it is a potential everyone has yet so few discovery.
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