I’m a Doer, Not a Viewer
It’s funny the things you adopt in life and say over and over but don’t realise that others might find it catchy and feel it’s a great thing to live by. I’m talking about the subject heading of this post. This has been my motto for most of my life. I’ve written about it and tell it from stages when I’m speaking but until just now never really thought about doing something with this phrase when asked if they could quote me. I had responded to someone via email and the topic was on leadership.
We were discussing how corporations might develop their leadership and I was asked if I thought that leaders are made through training and rules on leadership behaviour or is it something inbuilt? My response was:
My own personal experience is that leaders will find a way and make use of whatever is within reach, or find a way to reach it, to get to where they are going. If corporations make available resources to assist that, then that is a good thing - yes perhaps they do need to target or identify those demonstrating leadership qualities but my guess is that many with those qualities will soon make themselves known anyway - they don’t sit in the back row just watching life, they want to get involved. My motto is ‘I’m a doer, not a viewer’ and have been like that all my life.
For the most part I feel that leaders are born and that they will make use of whatever surrounds them to develop their qualities and abilities. That’s not to say that others can’t learn to be leaders - they can if they hang around the right people and continuously educate themselves through life, but it may just be that they had something inside themselves anyway and they just needed the right word, the right person, the right ‘thing’ to become a catalyst to send them to the front.
Conversely I know people who have been targeted for leadership roles, sent to training, offered promotions and higher pay, but have knocked it all back reverting back to what they feel most comfortable in - a role of following, rather than leading. KMT
what makes a leader?, leadership qualities, follower, ‘doer not a viewer’
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