Is Leadership a Skill or a Trait?

Apparently, we spend about three and a half billion dollars a year on leadership training, out of around three hundred billion on training in total, or a little over 1%. Either that means we're not really that interested in it. or we think we're naturally good at it anyway, ot maybe that we don't get a quick enough return on it.

As a general rule, good management improves near term returns, whilst good leadership determines the opportunities we have to get the best returns from good management. There is no clear dividing line in business - we need managers who understand leadership, and leaders who can manage and for the most part we have people somewhere in the middle. We make the best returns, in normal times, with good managers who are competent leaders.

Right now however, competent isn't enough. We are faced with chronic uncertainty and complexity. VUCA on steroids compared to when the term was originally coined by the Warren Bennis and Bert Nanus over thirty years ago based on the …