In academic and professional settings, discussions about leadership development often entertain the question: Are leaders born or made? While these discussions are fruitful in advancing our understanding of external leadership behaviors, they can distract from the concept of a more impactful interrogation of the internal processes and forces at play. These processes are far more potent in helping to identify, challenge, and ultimately shape an individual's development. This chapter attempts to make the case that leaders are made, not born, and that the individual has many tools available to aid in their development, including coaching: coaching provided by external professionals and coaching as an exercise of deep self-reflection and transformational growth. Building upon the thought leadership of several prominent leadership scholars (Goleman, Blanchard, Greenleaf, Chaleff), the author provides concrete steps to facilitate this development process from the inside out.
TopIntroduction
A book titled Critical Perspectives on the Intersections of Leadership and Coaching by its very name cuts a wide swath across the landscape of leadership scholarship. As an instructor teaching leadership courses, a consultant offering leadership assessments and a coach providing leadership insight, I have been an avid consumer of many of these research morsels nestled in thousands of articles dedicated to leadership development. This chapter explores four concepts which I have found useful in all three contexts noted above: leadership can be strengthened through formulating identity, embracing followership, managing derailers, and proactively seeking and responding to assessment feedback.
The kernels of these ideas have long been espoused by researchers (Boyatzis et al., 2019; Collinson, 2006; Crossman & Crossman, 2011; Day & Harrison, 2007a; Zia-ur-Rehman et al., 2021; Goleman & Boyatzis, 2017; Haslam et al., 2022) who knowingly or serendipitously explored the sweet spot in the Venn diagram below. Leaders who are able to coach themselves are ultimately directing their own career success and may act as an active facilitator for their colleagues and teams.
Figure 1. Note. This figure illustrates the overlap between leadership as a position or practice and coaching as an activity. It intends to support one of the primary ideas in the chapter regarding the porous nature of these two activities within the stated proposition that leaders are made, not born. TopBackground
In my role as an adjunct lecturer at Northwestern University, I developed and taught a course titled “Leadership Principles & Practices” in the university’s School of Professional Studies (SPS). The student body in SPS is chiefly comprised of working adults who did not finish college during their early 20s and have enrolled in the program to complete their B.A. degree at a later time in their lives. Unlike students in the “day school” who are enrolled full-time, SPS students attend classes on weekends and during the evenings (and increasingly through asynchronous channels) and their classroom time must be balanced with professional job responsibilities and often, with raising a family. They are seasoned professionals and have impressive credentials and resumes with leadership titles such as Manager and Director. In other words, these students are demographically compatible with their peers in conference rooms, not classrooms. The course content aligns well with their lived experience.
During the first session in the 10-week course, I asked students to stand up and place themselves into one of two groups: leaders and non-leaders. I gave them no further instructions except that they could not ask me any questions about the directions; nor could they discuss their options with other students. They were told to simply gather on the right or left side of the room. Each side was designated for leaders or non-leaders. Students paused and looked around before settling on a choice. Several students confidently strode to the “leader” area. A few students almost apologetically, heads down, gaze averted, tentatively joined the non-leader group.
Then I prompted them to reflect on three questions:
- 1.
Why did you pick the group you are in?
- 2.
What thoughts or considerations did you entertain when making the choice?
- 3.
What evidence do you have to support your decision?
They were given 15 minutes to share with their classmates and then they were expected to report out to the rest of the class. Table 1 below captures the most common responses from each group (leaders and non-leaders) with two additional items: