“Leaders are Born, and So Are You”
Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner
Date Published: Winter 2016
Abstract
We have never met a leader who was not born. Leadership is not some mystical quality that only a few people have and everyone else does not. There is leadership potential everywhere we look. Before we can examine evidence and examples of the mindsets that enable people to become the best leaders they can be, we need to addresses some of the fables that keep people from thinking that they can provide leadership and be leaders. Five myths inhibit learning to lead and contribute most to the misunderstandings about what leadership is and is not. They are the talent myth, the position myth, the strengths myth, the self-reliance myth, the it-comes-naturally myth. The key message of this chapter is, leadership potential and skills are not talents that some people have and other people do not. They are much more broadly distributed than traditional legends suggest.