Leaders need skills much as carpenters need hammers and drills. Skills are leadership tools. But, as my wife can tell you, just having a toolbox full of hardware doesn't make me a talented craftsman. The difference between a handy husband and a master carpenter is not in the hammers, or even the eyes and the hands, but in the mind.

If you want to grow new leaders, you need to focus first on developing the managerial mind rather than leadership skills. Good leaders need a combination of managerial maturity, business acumen, wisdom and ethics in order to know what to do with skills. They must be able to look at the world through a number of distinct lenses, synthesize the chaos of reality into a coherent image and then use leadership skills to move people to positive action.

Given a choice, I'd take a less skilled but more thoughtful leader over a highly trained but more limited thinker. A leader with a good mind and heart can usually overcome a deficit of skills, but an immature yet skilled manipulator will eventually self-destruct, taking his organization with him.

Beyond skills

So, why are there so many programs that focus on skills rather than mind-set? I suspect that there are good reasons for that.