Managing and Leading Nonprofit Organizations

2Leadership as Practice

Malcolm Gladwell (2008) is credited with defining the amount of practice needed to master a desired skill. His observation that excellence in any endeavor requires 10,000 hours of practice is widely quoted and, while pundits argue about the veracity of the claim, we can agree that anything worth learning takes practice. While some people seem to have a natural ability for a given activity it is also true that people can be taught. This is true for leadership as well (Doh, 2003). Some people may have characteristics that support their ability to be an effective leader while others may find themselves with fewer innate abilities to support them at the onset. Despite these differences individuals have the capacity to build their leadership capability through thoughtful practice.

For example, I had a manager who was extremely introverted, and it pained her to speak with large groups. It literally took every bit of strength she had to talk within our group gatherings, never mind the stress that she experienced when presenting to a group at a formal conference. As a contrast, I had another manager who was quick‐witted and extremely comfortable presenting to groups and seemed to become more energized as the group size grew. A true extrovert! Now, the introvert had much more technical knowledge and had spent a great amount of time studying and learning the content that was to be presented. In contrast our extrovert's ability to work the crowd created a dynamic ...