Are Leaders Born or Made

It's a question that you think might have been put to bed and suffocated with a pillow by now, yet the debate still rages, and fiercely.

Since we live in the glorious age of instant search, and weren't sure if any progress had been made on this debate in recent years, we decided to save you the tedium of going beyond the first page of Google results by spending a few hours key-wording what the most well-known experts we could think of had to say, as well as reading through hundreds of comments on LinkedIn, recent papers and articles - scientific and otherwise - that would help hit the question from as many angles as possible.

Here are the quotes from our favourite experts, followed by a more detailed summary below.

"The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born - that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That's nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born." - Warren Bennis (Leadership Professor and Best Selling Author, On Becoming a Leader)

"Great leaders are made, not born." - Marshall Goldsmith (Leading Executive Coach and Author)

"Effective leaders are made, not born." - Colin Powell (Retired General and U.S. Secretary of State)

“Leaders grow, they are not made.” - Peter Drucker (Business Management Icon)

"I certainly believe leaders can be made. I think some people who are extraordinary are born leaders and they probably showed it from an early age at one end of the continuum. And I think at the other end, there may be people who could never be a leader no matter what they did. But I think everybody has in them the potential to lead. And the question is whether the circumstances evoke that." - Rosabeth Moss Kanter (Professor, Harvard Business School)

"I know some people who are just born leaders. But I also feel that leaders can be made. People can learn. So I tell people that leaders are born AND made." - Ken Blanchard (Management Consultant and Best Selling Author)

"The answer, perhaps not surprisingly, is both." - Jack Welch (Former CEO of GE)

“Are we basically a product of nature or nurture? Neither. We are a product of choice. Are leaders born or made? Neither. They are self-made. Again it is a choice.” - Stephen Covey (Author, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People)

"It's a bad question that illuminates little, as it fails to deal with a basic point, namely the degree of responsibility sought." - Preston Bottger (Professor of Leadership at IMD Business School)

"Based on surveys of hundreds of twins, an Imperial College London study found that genes account for just 49% of a person's qualities of transformational, or inspirational, leadership." - JUNE 15th 2011, "There's More to Leadership Than Genes", Harvard Business Review

The answers range from siding with made, to slightly more with made, to both, to neither, to accusing the question of being misleading, but interestingly, none of them side with born.

Are leaders born or made? It ultimately depends on how you define the term "Leader." We can go round and round in circles, but in the end, it is going to come down to what you believe this single word means: whether it's a dictionary definition, or a famous quote you like, or if it's a distinct image formed in your mind from the culmination of your own experience in business and life.

In a technical sense, the answer can only be both, since it is phrased as an 'either/or' question, and it can't be exclusively one or the other - we know the importance of both genetics and environment. The jury is still out on how much nature and nurture shapes our lives in general, but the rough consensus for decades has been "about 50/50." So does adding "leader" really change anything? Does it suddenly make one side super important?

The idea of a 'born leader' suggests that there is some kind of leadership skillset that a person is born with. The 'made' argument suggests that there is some kind of leadership skillset that a person has had to acquire. But what skillset? What trait, or traits, are the minimum requirement in order to be classed "a leader?"

Assertiveness? Intelligence? Passion? Determination? Vision? Empathy? Integrity? Trustworthiness? Interpersonal skills? Influence? Charisma?

What about being a "great leader?" Again, is there any different skillset in order to be a great leader, as oppose to some kind of "basic leader?"

What we are assuming here is that leadership has a skillset. It might not; certainly there is no universal agreement on one at the moment.

All of this is still up for debate.

Here's what we know: Genetic predispositions aid by building a foundation, but these natural talents are not sufficient by themselves to create great leaders. Nobody is born to lead from the minute they are born; all definitions of leadership commonly describe it as a type of social activity - and everyone has to learn the best way to socialise. The importance of the genetic argument comes into play only when a person has an absence of a certain trait (e.g. someone who is extremely shy might find it impossible to become a CEO of a fortune 500 company).

But this now leads us to our most important question: Who says that a CEO, or any executive, or any manager in charge of a group, is, by default, a leader? Is it possible that a CEO might not be worthy of the title "leader?" If a leader, as one definition has suggested, is someone who inspires others towards a common goal, then there are many so-called business leaders that would fall short of this definition. As soon as they stopped paying their employees, no-one would be motivated to follow them.

It all depends on whether you see the word "leader" or "leadership" as:

a position (such as a CEO in a formal position who has employees) or by saying that a leader is defined as "anyone person who has followers", or even as an informal position that can only be earned in the eyes of others;

as some kind of common personality trait(s) that an individual has which is either very difficult or impossible for others to obtain if they aren't born with it;

as something you do from time to time in a particular context (leading as a behavioural practice, such as "the act of inspiring people towards a common goal", rather than it being something that you are 24 hours a day - as in the case of holding a personality trait or a position).

There is no right or wrong answer, just different levels of perspective. In the end, it comes back to what you see in the words.

One thing that we have found is that the current expert consensus is leaning more towards made, than it is towards born.

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