F3 People love to argue about whether leaders are born or made. F3’s field manual sidesteps the debate with a practical claim: whatever you are born with, the basics of leading can be taught, and they have not changed in thousands of years.
Are the principles of leadership really universal?
F3 says yes, and timeless too. It calls the first stage of developing a leader schooling: simply learning the head-knowledge of how leadership works. And that knowledge, F3 insists, applies to every kind of group in every era. What was true about leading for Moses at the head of the Israelites is just as true for you today at the office or in the driver’s seat of a minivan full of kids. The situations change wildly. The underlying principles do not. If the principles are that universal, the next question is how a man actually picks them up.
Does it take a fancy program to learn it?
No. F3 is refreshingly unsnobbish here. Schooling covers a huge range of quality and intensity, from spending four years at West Point to reading a plain-language leadership book in your spare time. Those sit at opposite ends of the spectrum, but they do the same essential thing: pass along the timeless principles. You do not need an elite institution to start. You need to actually learn the fundamentals, from wherever you can get them. It helps to put a face on one of those fundamentals.
What’s an example of a principle that always applies?
Lead by example, F3 says. It works exactly the same whether you are running a Fortune 500 company or organizing the church picnic. Fail to live what you ask of others, and you will lose the volunteer who brought the potato salad just as fast as you would lose a board of directors. The principle never changes. What a good leader does change, constantly, is his style, tuning his approach to fit the particular group and moment. The fundamentals are fixed. The application is always being adjusted. And both, F3 says, can be learned.
F3 calls this Schooling, part of leaving right in the F3 Nation Q-Source, the field manual for virtuous leadership that F3 is built on. Read the full teaching: f3nation.com/schooling. F3 Denver is where men practice it. Find a workout.