Today, leaders (managers) strive to be truly understanding of others and have a desire to build a strong culture but are often burned out due to the concomitant stresses of leading their respective organizations. I believe these leaders lack the proper mindset to overcome these hurdles. The skills to work with our minds and our emotions and with other people are essential but rarely developed. According to Gallup 2013, leaders failed to provide genuine leadership to 70 percent of employees who were disengaged and had low productivity and innovation. Only 8 percent of people strongly agree that they experience overall well-being because of their work.
In my observation, leadership is a combination of talents and hidden skills. Research on leadership indicates that 50 to 75 percent of organizations are currently managed by managers who lack leadership competence. Many leadership researchers have weighed in on Natural-Born Leaders (NBL) but surprisingly, there is very little literature that fully explores this theory.
Managerial leadership can come in different flavors. One way to think about it is according to the differences in thinking styles, namely convergent and divergent thinking. Convergent-thinking leaders have a limited predetermined number of options and will look for data that supports one or the other. They don’t consider things outside the box and, consequently, miss answers that can be equally viable or perhaps even superior. Divergent thinker leaders always think out of the box and find various solutions for the same issue and can make clear, strong decisions with confidence and with positive outcomes. This is the quality of NBL. I have thirty-seven years of experience using my clinical intuition as a doctor, and leadership intuition as a chief executive officer (CEO) taught me how to reach on-balance decisions according to the available information based on my previous observations and experiences.
Many leaders, therefore, just end up following the status quo, unable to lead due to fear of failure. They are unable to take risks; they play safe and don’t address issues until they spiral out of control. These leaders do not trust their own abilities. When leaders become followers of the status quo, they make excuses and blame others for deficient performance. Therefore, employees are mostly dissatisfied with their managers or leaders.
