Leaders are made, not born

Carly Fiorina tells the story of an experience she had when she was a teenager living in Ghana, where her father had taken a teaching job. She remembers seeing for the first time one of the enormous earthen mounds heaped up by colonies of West African termites as they pushed dirt back and forth every day along the same path. Day in, day out along the same path, pushing their dirt.

She recalls her companion that day making the observation that, “People can be a lot like termites.”

“It’s true,” said Fiorina, a member of the JMU Board of Visitors who delivered the keynote speech for “Leadership Matters,” the fourth in the biannual series of Leading Change conferences staged by the School of Strategic Leadership Studies.

The event provided opportunities for leadership scholars at both the graduate and postdoctoral levels to present their research in a developmental atmosphere, while forming meaningful connections with practitioners across a wide range of disciplines.

Fiorina’s point about the termites, she said, is that we too can form the habit of tracing and retracing our accustomed paths, of staying in our own lanes, of occupying only the space in which we’re most comfortable – and just keep going.

The problem with repeating deeply ingrained patterns over and over, Fiorina said, is that nothing ever changes and, consequently, no growth occurs.

“No growth” is not an assessment ever likely to be attached to Fiorina herself. After embarking on her professional career as a secretary for a nine-person real estate firm, she rose through the ranks at AT&T and Lucent Technology. As chair and CEO of Hewlett-Packard from 1999 to 2005, Fiorina became the first woman to lead a Fortune 50 company – transforming H-P into what was at the time the largest technology company in the world. Later, during the 2015-2016 election cycle, she mounted a bid for the Republican nomination for President of the United States.

“Why do we care so much about leadership?” wondered Fiorina at the outset of her talk. It is because we recognize, she says, that leaders (and the very exercise of leadership) are the ‘secret sauce’ – the missing ingredient that changes the ordinary into the extraordinary.”

Foremost among Fiorina’s beliefs about leadership is that its highest calling is to unlock potential in others and work with them to solve problems and change things for the better.

“Leaders are made, not born,” she said.

“Anyone, everyone is capable of leadership,” Fiorina continued. “Not everyone has the opportunity to discover that. Not everyone has the challenges that test them to hone their leadership skills. Not everybody expects it of themselves … but everyone is capable of leadership.”

Fiorina said that if she “had to pick just one thing” she looks for in people, it is imagination – which she describes as “seeing possibilities.”

“Leaders see the possibility,” she said, “that things can be better. Leaders see the possibility that problems can be solved. Leaders see potential that can be leveraged. And in the end, it’s also an important thing for a leader to be able to see the possibility that others can also lead.”

“What I have seen over the course of my life and my career,” Fiorina said, “is that if you can unlock the best performance from as many people as possible, and if you can get a team focused on a common goal and worthy purpose, then literally almost anything is possible.”