61 | Are leaders born or are they made?| The Leadership Debate Unveiled: Justin Deese

Show Information

Episode Number: 61

Date: November 18, 2024

Duration: 23:54

Host Contact Information

Host: Justin Deese

Website: JustinDeese.com 

Contact: Justin@JustinDeese.com

Summary

In this episode of the Freedom Blueprint podcast, host Justin Deese explores the age-old question of whether leaders are born or made. He discusses the importance of leadership in today's world, particularly in the context of the gig economy and the increasing options available to individuals. Deese outlines various traits that contribute to effective leadership, such as charisma, confidence, emotional intelligence, resilience, empathy, problem-solving abilities, adaptability, and team building. He concludes that while some traits may be innate, most can be developed through experience and effort, emphasizing that great leaders are ultimately made through hard work and determination.

Takeaways

Leadership is more important now than ever.

The gig economy has changed the landscape of work.

Charisma can be both innate and learned.

Confidence is often a learned trait.

Emotional intelligence is crucial for managing teams.

Resilience is developed through experience.

Empathy can be cultivated over time.

Problem-solving skills are essential for leaders.

Adaptability is a learned skill necessary for growth.

Leaders are made through hard work and determination.

Chapters

00:00 The Leadership Debate: Born or Made?

07:02 Traits of Effective Leaders

19:29 The Journey of Leadership Development

Keywords

leadership, born or made, traits of leaders, leadership development, emotional intelligence, resilience, adaptability, team building

Transcript

Justin Deese (00:06.465)

Are they born or are they made? And I want to go over kind of some different approaches to thinking about it and have a good conversation with you about it.

Justin Deese (01:02.552)

Are leaders born or are they made? So today we're going to talk a little bit about leadership, specifically the question of, they, are leaders born or are they made? you know, this, this topic comes up pretty, pretty frequently. And, I really think it would just be a really good conversation and topic for us to talk about. And first off, I want to say this leadership as a, as a topic is just a, it's a huge topic, right?

and it covers a lot of different areas and a lot of different angles. And so again, specifically, we're going to go into just a couple of things to kind of dive into more of the born or the made side of it. But here's my statement for you. My statement is this leadership right now is more important than it's ever been.

I repeat that again to make sure you got that in your ear. It's leadership now is more important than ever. Now. I bet you're asking yourself the question, why, why would I say that? And to be honest with you, I'm glad you asked and I'm glad we're having this conversation because it's a it's a really good it's a really good question to ask. So I think one of the big topics on this is because.

of what we have now in our world is people have more options than they have ever had before. I think a lot of times people talk about this gig economy, right? And they're like gig economy and if you don't know what that means, I'll give you the quick cliff note version, which is basically short-term work, right? So a gig economy is either short-term or freelance work as opposed to that

permanent traditional job employment. And you know, now some examples of people that are, that are utilizing that gig economy for their employment or their income. mean, think about Uber and Lyft and DoorDash. Fiverr's another one Upwork. There's one that's called TaskRabbit for, you know, things around the house that you could use. So there's a lot of different apps out there that you can

Justin Deese (03:26.257)

participate in this gig economy. And, it's, easier now than ever, right? If, if you, if you go to work and you're like, I don't like my boss or I don't like whatever, and you decide to leave, there's a good chance you can get on an app. before you drive away in the parking lot, you can probably have picked up a gig to do something, to make some money. you know, I feel like it used to be, I'm going to say 20, 30 years ago, you know, people worked at the same job for however many years to get that gold watch.

And it's just not the world we live in anymore. That's not, it's not the world we live in. And not only that, I think that next generation coming up, you know, we, we talk a lot about this, but I think flexibility is one of those things that they cherish like off, you know, being off flexibility, you know, a lot of those things are things that are very important to them that in the past and traditionally that hasn't been as important. So

think a lot of times when people talk about the gig economy, think business leaders and the home service industries, they don't really take that into consideration, right? They think more about, mean, yeah, there's a gig you can go to for Uber and Lyft and DoorDash, but you know, who wants to do that? And my challenge to you is I would probably reshape your thinking just a little bit. So the reason I say that,

is one, you have team members that have a lot of different skills and work in different roles in your business. And I know a lot of times when we talk about home service space, we traditionally think about the technician, right? Like the revenue generating technician. But let's be honest, there's a lot of different roles that happen in your business. whether you're a really large business or a small business, there's these roles that are happening, whether it be

you know, the CSR role or the dispatching role or the accounting side of it or marketing or even sales. I mean, there's a lot of different types of variety of backgrounds that people have that work for your business, not just the one thing they do. A lot of times people like to do other things as well. And two, technicians are not really able to participate as much as technicians in this gig economy right now.

Justin Deese (05:48.785)

Now, trust me, when I say this, the big banks aren't the only people taking notice of our industry. They're not the only ones paying attention to what's going on in the home service space. mean, Google is paying attention. Amazon is paying attention. Walmart is even paying attention. And believe me, they're working diligently right now to figure out how they can have a piece of the pie. Now Google obviously has a giant, giant, giant.

Piece of the pie is anybody who deals with marketing or does any type of digital marketing knows that Google's got a huge part of it. But I can promise you they're trying to figure out along with the Amazons and the the Walmarts of the world. How can they be a part of this industry? How can they be a part of this? This industry and and I think that's probably going to shift towards kind of a gig economy, so to speak. so with those things, that's really why.

That's really why I make the statement of leadership now is as important as ever. And again, it comes down to people just having more options than they've ever had before.

Justin Deese (07:02.802)

So let's get back to the question hand. So I wanted to make that statement, but I want to get back to the question, which is, are leaders born or are they made? And so I want to go over a couple of traits. So I want to go over eight different traits of leaders and leadership, and then we can kind of talk through each one and figure out together if we feel like these are traits that people are born with, or are they traits that people learn?

And I don't know, my goal for today is for us to get through this together and then go, yeah, we can make a definitive decision on are leaders born or are they made? So one of the number one traits I feel like that is really important when it comes to leadership is charisma, right? I think charisma is really important. People want, people are attracted to people that are

you know, influential people and a lot of that has to do with charisma. So, you know, to answer the question, are they born? Is it made? you know what? I think the answer is a little bit of both. mean, certainly people, naturally are more charismatic than other people. but I mean, let's be honest, there is a, there's a book for just about anything or a YouTube channel, or dare I say a podcast, there could be even a podcast for, you know, being more.

charming or influential or inspiring or motivating to a team. So, so number one being charismatic, I'm going to say both. I'm going to say that yes, you can be born with it, but you can also learn how to be a little bit more charismatic. So that's my, that's my first thing. I'm curious to know what your answer on that is. Tube, let's go to the next one. So the next one is going to be confidence.

Confidence is very, very important when it comes to leadership. Now, confidence is not the same as arrogance, as I'm guessing anybody who listens to this would agree with me. There's a difference between being confident and being an arrogant person. right, so confidence. you know, confidence sometimes can come from a variety of different places. You know, sometimes it can come from

Justin Deese (09:23.445)

experience and doing something you can become more confident. you know, experience and being good at something obviously gives you more confidence versus not. so I, you know, for me again, same thing. I think that you could be born naturally with a little more confidence, but I, gotta say, I think most of most people that are confident is that as a learned trait. I'm going to, I'm to put that in the list of learned, learned traits versus.

born. that's, that's my answer on that. The next one is going to be, let's go in emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence. So if you don't know what that means, it's really the, ability to understand and manage emotions, right? So can you, can you manage the emotions of other people? Can you, you know, conflict resolution, can you, can you manage that part of it? Can you,

Make sure to, know, when you have a major issue, are you able from a leadership standpoint to go in and resolve this issue? And my answer on that one is, is going to be learned. I think it's, I think that's a learned behavior. think, I think naturally people are not really interested in solving other people's problems. They're not interested in conflict resolution. I think most of the time, I think

Yeah, for me, I'm going to say this for me, I think I'm pretty good at conflict resolution. And, but I, but I feel like I've, I'm good at it, but I've also worked at it. Like that's not something that has, that has been natural for me. because usually when there's conflict, I just, I don't want to be around it. Like I'd rather just go the other way or go find something else to do. And I think that's kind of a natural, I think that's natural for most people.

But yeah, so I'm going to put that in the column of learned. So next we've got resilience. Are you resilient? Do you have that rubber band effect? Like if somebody pulls you back, you going to pull back or are you going to pull out and stretch too far and be no good as a rubber band anymore? So resilience is, know, how do you handle setbacks? How do you handle failure? How do you handle those kinds of things? Because

Justin Deese (11:50.807)

you know, it's, not easy. And from a leadership perspective, I'm going to say this about, about leadership and resilience to your team. If you're, which you, if you're listening to this, there's a good chance you're in a leadership, you're a leader, right? Now, whether you're in the role or not of a leader is a different story. leadership has nothing to do with title period. It just does not. so you can be in a leadership role without having the title of fill in the blank manager.

or whatever, but your team and the people around you, actually, I'm going to take that back. I'm going to take back the team. I'm going say that people around you, they are watching what you do and what you say and what you don't do and what you don't say. Right. So I think resilience is one of those things where people watch you if you mess something up, but man, they almost pay closer attention to see how you react to it.

Is that the type of person who's going to get up and solve the problem and keep moving? I think that from a resilience standpoint, think the my answer and I'm curious to know what your answer is, but my answer is going to be this is a made, this is a you learn resiliency, right? You learn to do it. So that's my answer on that one. Next on the list is going to be empathy.

You know, empathy is one of those things where in order to be an effective leader, do have to have empathy. You do have to be empathetic to those around you. You can't be the kind of person that when someone has a problem, whether you care about it or not. you know, you know, sometimes people have baby mama drama that you're not really all that interested in having a conversation or listening to or whatever, but you still have to be empathetic to what

is going on in that person's life. I think empathy is one of those things where people naturally, I think, are born more empathetic than other people. But again, like anything else, I also think that you can learn. It's a learned skill. think that you can learn to listen to people. I think you can learn to pay attention to what's going on and

Justin Deese (14:13.288)

You know, be empathetic. It doesn't mean solve the problem. It doesn't mean, you know, just means be empathetic. Like listen and support the team and the environment around you. So I'm going to put that one on. It could go either way, but again, I think made. I think it's a learned habit. I think you can learn to be empathetic or more empathetic, I should say. Next on our list is problem solving abilities. So.

Are you able to solve problems? And when I think about problem solving, problem solving is pretty critical when it comes to leadership skills, I think, because in order to problem solve, especially like think about, think about in times of crisis, right? Like think back to when COVID first became a thing, you had a problem solve, right? And we didn't even know what the problem was, but the biggest thing you had to do was you had to stay calm.

You had to analyze what all was going on. And then you had to come up with a plan on how to, you know, well, inspire, motivate, sometimes retrain, learn new. We were all learning things during this, this period of time. So, problem solving, think is is a big one. And I think that one's going to be made as well. I don't think, I don't know, problem solving abilities to me is like walking. Like when we were born, we didn't know how to walk. We had to learn, we had to train, we had to

walk basically and you the whole walk before you run. think problem solving abilities that's that's what that's going to fall under as well. So next on our list we have adaptability and man the skill to adjust I think adaptability flexibility I know for me as a core value this is this is a big one for me. I know when

Gist and I were creating Paradise Home Service at the beginning and we were kind of doing our core values. know, adaptability and flexibility was really at the core of what we talked about the most with the team because we knew we were wanting to grow and scale very quickly. And we knew in order to do that, we would need team that were able to adapt and be flexible. And at the same time as a leadership, we had to be able to do that. So, you know, we had to be able to adjust to new things that were happening.

Justin Deese (16:37.433)

We had to be able to embrace the change going on around us. And I'm gonna even say and stay positive with it, right? I mean, again, not to, this is not all about COVID, but here we go. We're gonna talk about COVID again. We had to embrace the change. We had to go, okay, cool. So yeah, I don't know what this is gonna look like, but what we are gonna do is we're gonna forge ahead and we're gonna make the most out of what we've got. And we're gonna stay positive. We're gonna stay focused.

sure we're going to shift some things we got going on, but we're going to go out and we're going to grind for a little bit. We're going to come back and we're going to reevaluate and figure out where do we need to adapt. So I think adaptability, I think that's a made skill. I think that's one of those things. It's a learned habit and a learned trait that is not born. So yeah, so that one's going to go under that category. And last, we have team building. And this one I really like.

Because I think team building is one of those things where you almost need all these, well, not almost, you need all these other skills in order to even begin to do this team building part of it, right? So you've got to be able to read and understand people and you've got to have a little bit of charisma and confidence in order for people to want to be on your team in order to build it. And you know, if...

your team members and as you're building a team problems always arise and if you're not, if you have zero empathy whatsoever, it's going to be very difficult to get people to, to follow you and want to be on your team. So, I think this is, I think a lot of times this is learned through like leadership training and, and hands on practice and sometimes even hands on messing it up. Like sometimes you, you learn how to do things. I know for me,

You know, the lessons I learn are the ones that are the most expensive and they hurt the most. Those are the ones that typically are the lessons that stick. and that I go through. So for the majority of those eight and listen, I know there is a lot of different other attributes that fall under leadership. Like as I think about it now, you know, I think about vision and I think about integrity to very critical parts to,

Justin Deese (19:01.646)

to leadership, to kind of leadership characteristics. And listen, and so really that kind of rounds it out with 10. I was gonna talk about eight, but there you go, there's 10, vision and integrity. But I think these things, all of them, you can be born with some of them, and most of them are learned, right? I mean, most of these habits can be learned, and some of them are even affected by environmental, and I don't mean the small outside, but.

the people that you surround yourself with. Right. So, you know, think the people that you surround yourself with can, can really play an effective part of, do you have these other, know, do you have these critical skills or these skills in order to be a good leader? So let me tell you a story. So there