Born to lead or learn to lead? Truth is -- no one knows for sure. But there is a small industry of writing, teaching, and speaking built on the proposition that you can at least talk about it. Studies by the Center for Creative Leadership and the Honeywell Corporation suggest that, after direct experience, the second source of learning about leadership is conversation with others.

To get in on real-time conversations about leadership, we subscribed to more than a dozen "mailing lists," where people trade insights and, it turns out, inanities. Sorting through hundreds of e-mail messages a day, we learned the first lesson of leadership: most of the time, those who are doing it aren't talking about it, and those who are talking about it aren't doing it.

What there is of value is useful questioning, intriguing philosophy, and a community of people talking across the boundaries of their organizations. This last point may be the most important: if you're interested in leadership's new models and styles, it's not always easy to find someone inside your own organization to talk with. On the Net there's a larger, more informal community that's eager to discuss everything from the most popular conferences they've attended to the most obscure books they've read.

The focus may wander and the quality is sure to vary -- an essential fact of life on the Net. But if you follow the Fast Company recommendations, you're guaranteed to find some stimulating thinking and inspirational postings on a subject that continues to fascinate people in business: Was I born a leader? Can I learn to be one?

Talk Your Way to the Top

Are leaders born or made? The only way to find out is ... to talk about it. The best online conversations for people looking to lead.

Surprisingly, the best postings on leadership do not come from the mailing lists that focus on leadership. (A mailing list is a message-management system where you e-mail a list of subscribers who are corresponding on the same topic.) Too many of the mailing lists we checked out are loaded with "wannabees" whose postings reveal how little they know and how much they can imagine about leadership. It turns out that the best thinking is coming from people who talk about managing, learning, and training -- which today translates into leadership.

Here are the three leading contenders for the best mailing list on learning how to lead. Choose the one that's right for you -- unless you like to live online, subscribing to more than one list will crunch your mailbox.

Learning Org

Founded by: Richard Karash (rkarash@world.std.com) , a trainer specializing in learning organizations who coaches facilitators at companies including Intel, Motorola, and Signet Banking Corp. He lives in Boston and is affiliated with the Framingham, Massachusetts consulting firm Innovation Associates.

Why founded: After posting a technical question about photography on the Internet two years ago, Karash was amazed to receive three "pure gold" responses within 24 hours. He had been researching new tactics for learning within organizations, and thought the topic of leadership deserved similar attention.

Number of subscribers: 1,632 as of this past December.

Messages per day: 15 to 20.

How to subscribe: E-mail majordomo@world.std.com with this message: info learning-org

Who should join: Followers of organizational learning guru Peter Senge. "Anyone curious about learning how to learn within organizations, especially those who are interested in the personal journey that seems to result," says Karash.

Big picture: Karash spends an hour a day screening messages, and the effort pays off: few junk mail or inflammatory postings make it through to subscribers, and the conversation covers leadership as well as learning-org themes. Online participation seems to be stronger from consultants and academics rather than businesspeople. As a result, postings can veer off into the abstract and theoretical; the conversation itself can be downright dense. (One subscriber recently wrote an apology for failing to "contextualize" a previous comment.) There is, however, good give-and-take on training exercises, best books to read, and how to contend with organizational resistance to change.

The list offers a useful reminder: although real-world experiences are helpful, theory isn't necessarily a bad thing. A typical e-mail on leadership, for example, recommends Peter Block's book "Stewardship" (The Publishers Group, 1993) and follows up with a comment: "Traditional leadership, at its best, is a form of parenting that inspires a dependency, rather than the kind of empowered commitment that our institutions require."

Bottom line: Learning Org is best for brainstorming ideas. A bonus: e-mail Karash and he'll send you a recipe for starting your own mailing list.