My mom is always asking me how and where I learned a particular word. I'll say something like "ambivalent" or "taciturn," and she expects me to be able to cite the origin of my knowledge. Sort of like parents on TV act when a kid uses a dirty word. But I never know what to tell her.
I started learning English when I was six, and it was a bumpy road, but I was driving fast. I'd try out a phrase I overheard, screw it up, then smooth it out. Playing fast and loose, as the Americans say. The competing flavor, of course, is slow and steady: buy a textbook, go to class, learn the difference between a noun and a verb. When I ask my mother where she learned a word, she gives me a page number.
For her, this style gets the job done, but English remains more of a subject than the stuff that thoughts are made of. Becoming a native speaker means being a scrappy, risky, and creative learner.
As far as I'm concerned, leadership is just another language; you can learn by the book, or you can dive into the deep end. Now, while I won't deny that I have hefty library of personal development books, I stand by the belief that nothing beats learning from your own awkward, terrifying, and eye-opening experiences. To me, learning to lead has meant pretending that I know how to lead, putting myself in a position of leadership, then figuring it out from there. This also means being able to do research as quickly as questions come up, being brave (and/or crazy) enough to try unusual approaches to a problem, and learning constantly from the people in my groups. It means messing up, laughing it off, and being confident that things will work out, come what may --and no, Mom, I don't remember where I picked up that expression.
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