Leadership Is Not a Single Skill. Instead, it's this...

When I was twelve, I was on our 7th grade basketball team. Our coach would make us spend the first 10 minutes of every practice dribbling up and down the court with our non-dominant hand. The concept was to identify your weak spot and develop it into a strength. Can’t dribble with your left hand? Work on it until you can do it without thinking.

That idea has stayed with me as way to learn and develop throughout my adulthood. Not good at uncomfortable conversations? Hire a sales coach and commit to being more honest. Hate getting feedback? Share your work more and get used to it. Slow at typing?
Practice. Practice. Practice.

As a general principle, it’s a great path for self-improvement. It’s essentially Kaizen– the Japanese philosophy of continual improvement. Find the weak spot. Make it a strength.

But as I get older, I’m learning there may be a flaw in that thinking. Especially when it comes to something abstract like leadership. Reading books and articles like “9 things all great leaders do before breakfast” and “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” I’m driven to believe (and most of us are) that there are common traits of leaders. And that I should try and adopt these characteristics, habits, processes, and values.

The flaw is rooted in how our educational system is developed, which is to create similar people. All of us go to the same classes, learn the same material, are expected to have the same outcome. But the truth– of school and leadership– is that we do best when we play to our own strengths. The best leaders are not trying to be someone else or adopting skills that someone else has told them they should have.

Instead, great leaders know themselves well, know their strengths, and play to those strengths. Sure, there is value in improving how we speak in public, organize our lives, show support and motivate pool around us. But I think the lie we’ve been taught is that “leadership” is a skill.

I believe the skill is self-knowledge.

Real leadership comes from having a strong idea, having people that value and benefit from that idea and owning who one is as a person and using that to our advantage. So maybe the question to ask next is not “where am I weakest and how can I improve that?” But instead to ask “What are my strengths as a human and how can I use that to my advantage?”

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Caveday is a company aimed at improving your relationship to work. We write regular posts on Medium and send out monthly newsletters with productivity tips, life hacks, and recommendations. Sign up for the mailing list here.

Jake Kahana is a cofounder of Caveday. Sign up for his personal emails, called “The Email Refrigerator” here.