With that definition of ‘leader’, no wonder you think it’s better not to be one.

I see a ‘leader’ as someone who is able to encourage a team towards some end. A good leader is able to assess the group’s resources, both physical and abilities, and get everyone involved in contributing their best skills towards the end in question. A good leader can make a team more than the sum of its individuals, as each is able to do what they do well, and complement each other’s work.
I think a large portion of leadership is innate, but everyone can develop the skills. I think it is beneficial for everyone to be *able* to lead if needed to complete a task, but it is better for society if most people are also able to follow, and don’t *need* to be the leader all the time.

I think there is another relevant factor here, and that is creativity. I can be a leader. I have the skills to break up a task given, and get a group to carry it out well. But I have to have something to do first. I am not an idea person. I am an implementer, rather than an idea-generator. Some people have great ideas, but no idea how to turn them into reality. I don’t tend to have a lot of great new ideas, but when someone mentions a possibility, I can often figure out how to turn it from the dream into a functioning reality, and get people on board to contribute to it.
I think a good entrepreneur needs to be both the creative idea-generator, and the implementer, or they won’t get very far. Partnerships can fix that, of course.

I think the main problem with the entrepreneur fixation going on right now is that it leads a lot of people who would be happy to work in a company to believe they aren’t good enough if they don’t run their own. I have seen a few friends who did really well as an employee with a set job fail at startups because they just don’t have the skillset to do it all themselves.
Personally, I love working at a company big enough that the labour can be divided, so I can concentrate on running my area, and leave other areas that don’t interest me, or at which I would not be skilled to others who do well there.

It’s just that THIS system has THESE rules. If it were another system, maybe there’d be different rules and maybe then other types of people would prosper. (Imagine a system or society that valued creativity above all else. Then writers would be the richest people while those with business skills would probably be poor.)

But anyway, TO THE POINT: executers and people with specific skills could freelance or consult. That’s a way to take charge of their career if they don’t want to build a business. (Or can’t – if you are a lab technician, it would be hard I think to invest in a lab and equipment so that you can do what you love. Being an employee has its strong sides.)

One has to wonder, even at 39%, who will follow all these aspiring “leaders” and why anybody at all would aim to be a “leader” when she doesn’t have any goals yet in mind to which she wants to lead others anyway.

My local school district has the same goal of “creating leaders.” It seems that every couple of decades new fads sweep the social engineering community and this is one of the current ones.

I’ve always thought of “leaders” as people who successfully persuade, manipulate, or otherwise get people to drop their own interests in life and work toward accomplishing their leader’s goals. No matter how necessary or desirable that may be at times, there are plenty of times it’s a downright awful thing, and even more times when the led would be better off lving their own lives without their leaders’ meddling.

I see nothing wrong with 61% of girls not being interested in becoming leaders (unless that proportion is much higher than with boys, which the study carefully neglected to mention).

By the way, she’s very career oriented, she just doesn’t want to be CEO.

This is the problem with not taking charge of your career.. if you let others drive, you get complacent and don’t learn the things you should. Eventually when the driver (your boss) hands you the keys (fires you), you don’t know which direction to go.

I quit my comfy, full time, management job last year to start my own company.. because I want to be the one driving. I’m very happy with my decision.

Do not depend on someone else to make you happy.

That, and the original version about creating a job for you, is about not waiting around and hoping someone hands something to you. If you’re always dependent on external forces to provide you the job you love, the life you love etc, you’re setting yourself up for unhappiness. The World can not, and generally will not, give you something.

You don’t have to be a builder to think this way either. I know a lot of helpers who have sought out fulfillment in life, in work etc. I think the “entrepreneur mindset” is more about taking charge of your situation, whatever it is. An Entrepreneur will *own* their work, their life. They won’t wait for someone else to make things happen for them.