Overseas Think Tank for Indonesia

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By Beni Bevly
Some people say that leadership is all common sense or leaders are born not made. Many people believe these myths. Are there correct?

In 2001, I was asked to be the Customer Service and Information Manager at one of the Nordstrom’s stores in California, USA. I was doubt because I did not have any experiences in customer service field.

One of managers said, “Don’t worry, company believes in you and this is all about common sense. All you need to do is assigning your employees for certain responsibility, than you control and check the resulst.” In the first week, before I attended Customer Service Skills for Manager class, I had the difficulty in handling customers’ complains and demanding employees. I answered all customer complains and employees’ questions based on the company policy that I knew. Yet, not all problems were solved easily, in two occasions, my supervisor had to get involved.

After attending the Customer Service Skills for Manager class, I handled customers’ complains and employees’ questions more professionally. Not only related the complains and questions to our policies, but I stressed a lot on “building rapport, finding out what their needs, matching their needs with our current or future products/services, and getting the agreement how to solve their complains.”

This experience taught me that by studying the definitions and theories of leadership that researchers had compiled, made me much easier to understand what going on in any leadership situation. Common sense alone is not enough.

Hughes, Ginnett, & Curphy in “Leadership: Enhancinf the Lessons of Experience describe that there are three myths in leadership: (1) good leadership is all common sense, (2) leaders are born, not made, and (3) The only school you learn leadership is the school of hard knocks.

First, good leadership is all common sense. This myth says one needs only common sense to be a good leader. The problem, of course, is with the ambiguous term common sense. It implies a common body of practical knowledge about life virtually any reasonable person with moderate experience has acquired. In Fact, common sense can often play tricks on us.

Here is one of them: A study, after World War II, from U.S. Army to reach conclusion that, many believed, should have been apparent at the outset. One, for example, was that southern soldiers were better able to stand the climate in the hot South Sea Islands than northern soldiers were. This sounds reasonable but this statement is exactly contrary to the actual findings. Southerns were no better than notherns in adapting to tropical climates.

To me, to be an effective leader, there must be something else than just common sense.

Second, leaders are born, not made. Which view is right? Some people believe being a leader is either one’s genes or not; other believe that life experiences mold the individual, that no one is born a leader. Both views are right in the sense that innate factors as well as formative experiences influences many sorts of behavior, including leadership.

Yet, both views are wrong to extent they imply leadership is either innate or acquired; what matters more is how these factors interact. Becoming a college professor depends partly on what one is “born with” and partly on how the inheritance is shaped through experience.

Third, the only school you learn leadership is the school of hard knocks. Formal study and real-life experience, in fact, complement each other. By studying the different ways, researchers have fined and examined leadership, student can use these definitions and theories to better understand what is going on in any leadership situation. It is difficult for leaders, particularly novice leader, to examine leadership situations from multiple perspectives. By developing this skill can help a person become a better leader.

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*Beni Bevly holds BA in Political Science, MBA in Marketing, and is a DBA (Doctor of Business Administration) candidate. He is the founder of Overseas Think Tank for Indonesia.