Are leaders born or become?

The question is often asked whether leadership is an innate trait or a learned behavior. The answer cannot be one-size-fits-all: leadership is a mix of attitudes and skills.

Some people lack the aspiration to be leaders altogether, but for others the aptitude to be a leader is an innate characteristic.

In line with these principles, at Toyota, the first step in leadership development is to identify people who have the potential to become leaders. The characteristic used in Toyota to recognize a potential leader is a desire, even a passion, for self-improvement, and only those who show the desire and ability to improve themselves are promoted to the next level of leadership.

Toyota provides extraordinary opportunities to develop the talents of individuals who show this inner desire, deliberately creating situations to challenge people and teach them to produce extraordinary people and leaders on a daily basis.

Indeed, leaders must learn to be leaders through training that gives them all the skills and tools they need for personal development and for the team they lead.

But what are the most important skills for Toyota leadership?

• Strong ability to openly observe the work in one’s own organization, without constraints and preconceptions;
• Active listening to what people are really saying;
• Ability to think systematically;
• Understanding of each person’s actual strengths and weaknesses;
• Ability to clearly define problems and identify their original cause;
• planning skills;
• Creative identification of countermeasures to the real root causes;
• ability to turn plans into concrete actions by assigning clear responsibilities;
• ability to take the time andenergy to reflect deeply and identify further opportunities for improvement;
• ability to motivate and influence people in the organization toward common goals (even without having direct authority over them);
• ability to teach this to others.

Improvement begins with learning

Leadership, then, is skill-based, but too often companies expect that one can learn to be a leader after a short training course: the assumption is that if the leaders being trained are able to understand the concepts intellectually, their actions will reflect what they have understood. Unfortunately, there is often no direct connection between what one understands conceptually and how one acts.

In fact, the focus of learning in Toyota can be traced back to a true cycle in which the learner evolves along three levels, with the involvement of the teacher decreasing step by step.

It is the so-called“Shu ha ri,” which you can learn more about in the following video excerpt from theExecutive Master Lean Lifestyle Leadership.