A client suggested a book by Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success.  I found the book insightful and the first five chapters are highly relevant for leadership.

Those of you who have attended the Applied Leadership Seminar know that I do not believe that leaders are “naturally born.”  My position is that leadership is about behavior which is (and can be) acquired.  If a person adopts the behavior of great leaders then they will become one.  The distance one has to travel to become proficient as a leader varies greatly depending on each person’s starting point, but in all cases it requires hard work.  In the seminar I provide a model for hard work based on research done by neuroscientist David Rock.  The model is as follow:

Positive Behavioral Change = (Experience + Expectation) x Attention x Veto Power

…where

Experience is about practicing new behaviors until they become hardwired,

Expectation is about the belief in one’s potential to grow,

Attention is about focusing new behaviors broadly in one’s life, and

Veto Power is about choosing to stop poor leadership behaviors.

Deploying the model results in behavioral shifts as neurons and synapses are created in the brain (mental maps) initially after as few as three repetitions of the new behavior.

Gladwell’s Outliers provides more depth to a few aspects of the neurological model.  Through references to academic research and a biographical analysis of the lives and careers of Bill Joy (Sun Microsystem founder), Mozart, The Beatles, Bill Gates, and chess grandmaster, Bobby Fischer, Gladwell illustrates that:

Experience and Attention:  People who get to the very top in any field don’t work just harder or even much harder than everyone else…they work much, much harder.  Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good.  It’s the thing you do that makes you good.  The 10,000-Hour Rule:  studies have concluded that 10,000 hours of practice are required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert in anything.  It takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to achieve true mastery.

Expectation:  Extraordinary achievement is less about talent than it is about opportunity.   These opportunities are co-created through relationships with people, places and things that move outwards and shape a person’s reality over time. Intellect and achievement are far from perfectly correlated.  Low achievers neither lack something expensive or impossible to find, nor something hardwired innately in their brains.  At a critical point in their development they lacked relationships within a community around them that could have prepared them for excellence in the world.  For those who lacked this community, if you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape your own opportunities.

I recommend the book for all aspiring leaders and those who wish to nurture the potential in their children, loved ones, friends, staff, colleagues and their organization.