Leadership: It’s In Your DNA

“My dream with this book is simple – to show you that your leadership DNA sits alongside your biological DNA,” writes the management consultant Rhea Duttagupta. Well that’s a relief! Every manager has times when they doubt – for which, read panic about – their ability to channel their inner Churchill, so it is good to know that we all have the potential to be great leaders.

Duttagupta argues that everyone has the 10 special ingredients needed to create a strong leader. It is down to each of us to unlock our unique blend. So what is the recipe? First comes ‘self’ and then ‘expression’, which is followed by ‘focus’ – and so on and so on.

This is nothing that seasoned managers haven’t heard before, but Duttagupta’s emphasis on getting your mix right is both refreshing and reassuring. It might be that you lack ‘resilience’, or you might need more ‘instinct’, or perhaps you don’t create enough of the right kind of ‘luck’. If the latter is your problem, it’s not because you were born without a luck quotient – the capacity to create circumstances in which what we call luck can occur. It is more about your ability to attract and seize on opportunities to channel that luck. Isn’t it time you got lucky?

Emma De Vita is books editor of Management Today