How to Find Your Leadership Instinct

Leadership is a skill. Skills start as instincts and get developed through training. If you want to be a leader, it’s helpful to know what your natural leadership instincts are. 

Many of the tools we use to assess ourselves are like astrology; they’re helpful but hardly scientific. This isn’t so bad. Just about all ideas begin unscientifically, and not all of them are proven wrong. 

At Fortune’s Path, we’ve created a leadership instinct assessment to be an unscientific but helpful tool.

For this assessment, we’ve divided leadership instincts into four archetypes: finder, maker, delegator, and decider. Our assessment assumes that when you’re assigned a task, your first thought demonstrates your instinctual preference. Do you look for someone to delegate the task to, or do you jump in and start the task yourself?

Key Benefits of Knowing Your Leadership Instincts

Leadership instincts are not destiny. All of them can be developed or moderated, and you may already possess more than one of these instincts. Knowing and developing your leadership instincts helps you be a better leader. If you’re a maker, knowing you’re a maker helps you pause before diving into a task to ask if you’re the right person for the task. If you’re a delegator, knowing you’re a delegator helps you pause to ask why a task is worth doing and what successful completion looks like. Reflection before action has a massive impact on results.

The Four Leadership Instincts

1) Finder

A finder is someone who enjoys research and collecting information. Finders are comfortable working alone. Finders may want to think about a task and analyze it before assigning it to someone else or doing it themselves.

Being a finder can be problematic as a leader, because finders resist working within a set of assumptions or choices. For a finder, there’s always another question to answer. That flexibility is great for the finder but can be hell on the people they lead. 

Strengths:

• Curiosity

• Independence

Weaknesses:

• Indecisive

• Capricious

Good for:

• Physicians

• Scientists

• Researchers

• Journalists

• Marketers

• Designers

• Writers

What to do if you’re a finder and you want to be a leader too? Ask yourself if you’re the best person to do the finding or if the task is better delegated to someone else. 

2) Maker

Makers tend to learn by doing or dive into a task before asking for help. Being a maker is good characteristic for an individual contributor or small group leader but is not great for someone who wants to lead. Makers get work done themselves; leaders get work done through others.

Decider is a good secondary characteristic for a maker to have, because knowing what “done” means is essential for any project, and defining the criteria for “done” is a task suited to deciders.

Strengths:

• Self-motivated

• Attention to detail

Weaknesses:

• Stubborn

• Obsessive

Good for:

• Artists

• Accountants

• Chefs

• Engineers

• Athletes

• Care givers

• Nurses

What to do if you’re a maker and want to be a leader too? Ask yourself who else can contribute ideas, expertise, or labor to the task at hand.

3) Delegator

Delegators get work done through others. When given a task, delegators think about who else can do the work. Delegators tend to learn by watching someone else. Delegators are not comfortable working alone. Being a delegator is a great instinct for leadership because delegation is an important part of leadership but is not sufficient to be a good leader. 

A good companion instinct for a delegator is to be a decider. Assigning others the task of researching options and then using those options to make decisions can be a very effective form of leadership. It’s also possible to be a delegator and not be a leader. Many salespeople have an instinct for delegation.

Strengths:

• Confidence

• Instinct for prioritization

Weaknesses:

• Self-centeredness

• Over simplification

Good for:

• Salespeople

• Lawyers

• Management professionals

• Entrepreneurs

• Military leaders

• CEOs

• Parents

What to do if you’re a delegator and want to be a leader too?: Being a delegator gives you an instinct to get work done through other people, and that’s a big part of leadership. But being a delegator does not earn you the right to lead. Any of the other three leadership instincts can match with delegation to create a great leader. Delegation alone is generally not enough. Before you delegate, think about why the task you’re delegating is good for the group and not just good for you.

4) Decider

Deciders are comfortable making decisions. This does not mean they are comfortable making goods decisions or taking responsibility. Those skills are very different from simply deciding. Good decisions require wisdom, and no one has an instinct for wisdom because wisdom has to be is earned through experience, observation, and study. Deciders can make great leaders because being a decider means you are not afraid to make decisions, and when you’re in leadership, no decision is often worse than a bad decision. 

Strengths:

• Clarity

• Courage

Weaknesses:

• Rashness

• Irresponsibility

What to do if you’re a decider and want to be a leader, too: Being a natural decider opens doors to leadership. Most people hate making decisions. Cultivate wisdom if you’re a decider, and surround yourself with people who are wiser than you.

To Grow as a Leader, Understand Your Instincts

Any combination of the four leadership instincts can be found in excellent leaders, and in bad ones, too. Good leaders will understand their instincts and will improve them or moderate them through training and practice. Self-awareness, discipline, and effort are more important for being a good leader than any set of instincts, but instincts are where we start, and even with training, they never leave us.