Thursday, July 8, 2010

Leaders are made, not born...

There is a constant clamor about “leaders being born and not made”. It’s so easy to assume that there are certain qualities inherent to people which make them good leaders because these qualities are not common and difficult to acquire. I agree that leadership can only be learnt through experiences and cannot be taught. But does that mean that leaders are born with these qualities? We have to look it from a broader perspective.

People who are reckoned as good leaders generally display some common qualities and these qualities have more of human element to it than functional. Some of these qualities are vision, resilience, creativity, team play etc. When a child is born, its impossible to predict whether it will become a future leader or not. As the child grows , it imbibes different values, skills and attitude from the society which influence his/her thoughts and actions. Its only when these values, skills and attitude surface in form of actions taken by an individual influencing lives of many, we realize the presence of a leader among us. It’s not hard to prove that it takes time for a human being to understand the complex fabric of society, human values and human needs. A leader is always well verse of these complexities and so the qualities are mostly acquired through experiences in life.

Another way to prove that leadership qualities can be developed is the knowledge that leadership is always in a context. If leadership had been hardwired than all leaders would have acted similarly to different situations, but that is not true. History is flooded with numerous examples of leaders in different forms and situations.

The reason for such a conundrum, I think, is the presence of many varying and hard to acquire qualities in one human being. For example, we have thousands of soldiers guarding Siachin glacier from intruders and showing tremendous resilience, we have thousands of creative handicraft workers and we have millions envisioning a 2020 India, but do we call all of them leaders? I don’t think so. Now think of a person who has a vision of 2020 India, have creative solutions to Indian problems and work through all the road blocks with resilience to make it happen. Would you call him/her a leader? The chances are very high that you would. Good leaders have many varying qualities that they develop and that creates the differentiation. Leaders can be made and they are made. Leadership is about continuous learning, as I said its a process, so it cannot be a gift given to some at the time of birth just because God loved them more. Leadership is not God’s gift but a man’s will to make a difference.

-- By Jiten Jain a.ka JJ

4 comments:

  1. A debate plagued mankind for generations! Can leaders be made or are they born? Truth be told, its a question that plagues not only the upper echelons of corporate world but the political fraternity as well.
    And perhaps it is as much a seed of our feudal devotion and servile mindset as it is of common understanding. How else can we explain dynasty of politics? Right from the days of kings and queens to our present generation of political leaders it carries the same story. The Mughal’s, the Rajput’s, the Nizam’s to the Royal families of England, Jordan, Japan et all to the Kennedys, Bush, Roosevelt’s, Taft’s of US, the Dys of Philipines and our very own Gandhi’s.
    Why does the venerated “Leadership Institutes” that our corporate bell-weathers have fail to create the great line of successors? Why does Britain still talks of Sir Winston Churchill as an epitome of leadership?
    Is there a secret formula to make leaders and churn them out of a “school”. Crack the formula and become a millionaire!!!

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  2. It comes back to the same point that I made in blog. "Leadership can only be learned through experience and can not be taught". I think politicians' and royals' kids are exposed, from a very small age, to things which a common person is not. It shapes up their thoughts and actions. But if we see carefully not all politicians or royals have their successors doing great, otherwise we would still be living under the Mugal era.
    The so called 'Leadership institutes" create managers because they are needed in bulk. Again, "Leadership can not be taught". Its a man's will to create differentiation and hence can only be acquired through a process called life. The politician and Royal families provide that catalyst, but they are not the alchemists for leaders.

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  3. I agree with you..."leadership is a man's will to make a diff"

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  4. Nice article, quite thought provoking.

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