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    Leadership Dna: Why the Accepted Premise That Anyone Can Be a Leader Is Utterly False and the Main Cause of Poor Leadership in America
    Leadership Dna: Why the Accepted Premise That Anyone Can Be a Leader Is Utterly False and the Main Cause of Poor Leadership in America
    Leadership Dna: Why the Accepted Premise That Anyone Can Be a Leader Is Utterly False and the Main Cause of Poor Leadership in America
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    Leadership Dna: Why the Accepted Premise That Anyone Can Be a Leader Is Utterly False and the Main Cause of Poor Leadership in America

    By Paul Okum

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    About this ebook

    Not many people are satisfied with the leaders we have in the public and private sectors. We are suffering from a severe lack of good leadershipeven though billions of dollars per year are spent on leadership training and development.

    The root cause of this leadership vacuum is that leadership gurus firmly believe, teach, and preach that anyone can be made into a leader with the right training, personal desire, and commitment. With this premise, theyve approached leadership as a commonplace and elementary skill that anyone can learn. Theres just one problem: theyre wrong.

    In this guidebook on leadership, youll learn about all aspects of leadership, including:

    how to look past personality profiles, leadership models, and traditional assessment tools to grasp what makes a great leader;

    how to identify and select natural born leaders to achieve your objectives;

    how to deal with poor leaders who hurt you and your organization.

    Leadership DNA examines the false premise that anyone can be a leader and provides insights and tools that lead to a better system of identifying, selecting, and developing born leaders.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisheriUniverse
    Release dateAug 7, 2012
    ISBN9781475937497
    Leadership Dna: Why the Accepted Premise That Anyone Can Be a Leader Is Utterly False and the Main Cause of Poor Leadership in America
    Author

    Paul Okum

    Paul Okum graduated from Temple University with a degree in business administration. A former U.S. Army officer, he has been an executive with the federal government in the Departments of Transportation, Interior, and Army, and was a human resources director with the Defense Department. He received six commendation medals for superior service. Visit his website at www.PaulOkum.com.

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      Book preview

      Leadership Dna - Paul Okum

      Leadership DNA

      Why the Accepted Premise That Anyone Can Be a Leader Is Utterly False and the Main Cause of Poor Leadership in America.

      Paul Okum

      9781475937497_TXT.pdf

      Leadership DNA

      Why the Accepted Premise That Anyone Can Be a Leader Is Utterly False and the Main Cause of Poor Leadership in America.

      Copyright © 2012 by Paul Okum

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      iUniverse books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

      iUniverse

      1663 Liberty Drive

      Bloomington, IN 47403

      www.iuniverse.com

      1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

      Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

      ISBN: 978-1-4759-3748-0 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4759-3750-3 (hc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4759-3749-7 (e)

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2012912263

      iUniverse rev. date: 08/02/2012

      Contents

      Introduction      Bottom Line, Up Front

      1      Leadership: Is It Science or Art

      2      Leadership Defies Definition

      3      Examining the Motives and Behavior Patterns for Leadership

      4      Levels of Leadership Talent Vary by Individual

      5      We Are All Born with DNA Talent Bank Accounts

      6      Leaders Drive a Clear Direction and Set of Guiding Principles

      7      Identifying and Selecting Natural-Born Leaders

      8      Leaders Old and New Are on an Island, Separate and Yet Inseparable from Their Employees

      9      Challenges for a New Leader: Delegating

      10      Challenges of a New Leader: Communicating

      11      Challenges for a New Leader: Coaching

      12      Chasing Reality When Obtaining Feedback for Leaders

      13      The Impact of Higher-Level Leaders on an Organization

      14      Dealing with Poor Leaders, Especially First-Time Leaders

      Epilogue      A New Direction for Leadership in the Twenty-First Century: The Choice Is Ours

      Introduction

      Bottom Line, Up Front

      Generations of leadership scholars, gurus, and authors have written extensively about and hotly debated a fundamental issue regarding leadership, trying to answer a simple question: Are leaders born or made? Although the question is simple, the opposing answers and arguments have far-ranging implications on how we approach leadership and how leaders are identified, selected, trained, and developed. Those scholars and gurus who make the argument that leaders are made view leadership as an elementary and commonplace skill. Their basic premise is that anyone and everyone can become a leader with leadership training, personal desire, and commitment. They believe that leadership can be learned and bolted on to anyone. This argument has been and remains without question the predominate view of leadership in this country.

      Those few individuals who regard leadership as either an attribute of the DNA package each person receives at birth or a gift from God stand in opposition to this premise that leaders are made. The New Living Translation(NLT) Bible Romans 12:6 and 8 clearly supports these dissenters: In his grace, God has given us different gifts for doing certain things well. So if God has given you the ability to prophesy, speak out with as much faith as God has given you. If your gift is to encourage others, be encouraging. If it is giving, give generously. If God has given you leadership ability, take the responsibility seriously.

      Whether as DNA from biological parents, a gift from God, or both, the clear minority argument in this debate is that we are each born with a unique set of attributes or talents, and consequently, not everyone will possess leadership ability. Accordingly, leadership cannot be learned and bolted on to everyone.

      As a former director of human resources for twenty-three years for an organization within the US Department of Defense, I had the opportunity to observe and analyze hundreds of individuals in leadership positions and thereby witness firsthand the effects of the popular argument that leaders can be made. My own personal experiences as a leader of a workforce of 105 employees and my observations and interactions with team leaders, supervisors, managers, and military officers in leadership positions in other organizations have forced me to the conclusion that the currently accepted premise that anyone can be a leader is utterly false and the main cause of the poor leadership in America.

      Therefore, Leadership DNA is a rejection of the premise that anyone can be made into a leader with leadership training, personal desire, and commitment. This prevalent belief, which a multitude of leadership books, speaking tours, and workshops have propagated and brought to life, has so permeated the professional trainers’ community that the debate regarding whether leaders are born or made is perceived as finished and won by those supporting the position that anyone can become a leader. Their belief appears bolstered by the research of many psychologists who attempt to use science to dispute the existence of innate DNA or God-given talent. Michael J. A. Howe, Jane W. Davidson, and John A. Sloboda in their 1998 article in the Cambridge University Press entitled Innate Talents: Reality or Myth? discount innate talent and explain the differences in individual ability and competence as being dependent on the amount of training, practice, personal motivation, self-confidence, and life experiences each person accumulates over time. According to them, anyone and everyone can become a leader.

      The key point here is that the debate is not over. After decades of annually spending billions of dollars on leadership training and adamantly adhering to this premise that leaders are made, we have yet to see the much-predicted widespread success in the development of good leaders in government, finance, business, education, and so forth. Quite the contrary, from the all-time-low approval ratings for Congress and US presidents, epic failures in leadership on Wall Street and in our financial institutions, and golden parachute CEOs bailing out of bankrupt corporations, our leaders clearly are not meeting the needs and expectations of the electorate, of employees, and of citizens.

      Despite all the leadership training, we continue as a nation to suffer from a severe lack of good leadership. Why? Because a host of leadership gurus and authors continue to convince us that we can scientifically dissect good leaders and discover what makes them tick; we can then compile these findings into some replicating formula that, when followed, will mass-produce leaders and usher in the

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