Are Leaders Made or Born?

“There is glamour attached to Talent while Hard work and Learning seems mundane. Also not being born with a certain talent is an excellent excuse to hide our inabilities. But the fact is human potential and capacity is enormous.”

My coachee posed this question to me – Are leaders made or born?

A Coach’s answer to this question will be – What do you think?

A consultant’s answer to this question will be – It depends

A most probable answer from a leader to this question will be – Born.

Most of us like to think that leadership is a trait one has to be born with and there is very little, if at all, that can be taught. There is glamour attached to Talent while Hard work and Learning seem mundane. Also not being born with a certain talent is an excellent excuse to hide our inabilities. But the fact is human potential and capacity is enormous.

Before Jim Hines ran 100 meters in 9.95 seconds in 1968, breaching the 10 second mark seemed unattainable for the human body. But once it was done, many others repeated the feat in the past 6 decades.
David Goggins, the US Navy Marine and author of the best-selling book “Can’t Hurt Me” was obese weighing over 300 pounds, who could not run even half a mile before he started training for the Marines and today, has hundreds of ultramarathons to his name.

In 1972 a Uruguayan plane crashed in the remote area of the Andes Mountain range. Two young men, Roberto and Nando, trekked the snow mountains without equipment or warm clothing, in the harshest conditions to a village on the other side of the range, in the Chilean foothills and were able to rescue 14 passengers who were stranded for 72 days. Robert’s quote “Don’t wait for the plane to crash to realise how much you have” says it all.

These three inspiring stories, and there are many more, are a testimony of what can be achieved with a strong, unbreakable resolve and untiring, consistent efforts. Leadership can be no different. It can be learnt. One can become far better at leading by working on the self, making the most of our strengths and acquiring new competencies.

As I heard my coachee emphasise about what in his view was the role of talent, I gave him an example of Ravi Shastri, one of the most successful cricketers across various facets of the game i.e. as a player, a commentator and Indian Team Coach. As a player he had quite a few limitations, both as a batsman and bowler, but he always made the most of his abilities and succeeded as an all-rounder despite his limitations.

I shared my view with him that, the mistake we make is to typecast a leader as someone bestowed with a superpower that she/he can be – visionary, charismatic, orator, well-read, detail oriented, commercially astute, well-networked, a consensus builder, an organisational builder, technologically advanced, well- travelled, and so on. But the fact is one doesn’t need all of this to be a leader. A leader needs to be great at some of these but develop the ability to inspire others into being great in the other areas. To be able to not just tap into one’s own abilities but into the capabilities of the team makes a leader. The three foundational aspects for anyone to be an effective leader over the long term are:

1. Have the Will to lead – You cannot be a good leader if you do not have the will. Leadership is a responsibility and comes with certain sacrifices, only when you have the will to make those choices, can you become the journey to the Leadership.
2. Acquire a Growth Mindset – Leadership is about continuous learning, unlearning and relearning. It is also putting your learning into action. Understanding the existing constraints but determinedly going forward, without overthinking those constraints, can achieve just as much as brilliance can, just as the 3 examples above demonstrate.
3. Inspire trust – In today’s complex world, the Complete Man (or Woman) is a myth and no one expects one person to be a ‘be-all’. As Steve Jobs said “Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team”. To be a great leader over time, you have to inspire trust…trust in your teams, in your business partners, in your customers and in the society. That takes committing to action and maneuvering tough situations to achieve it.

What is your opinion – Are leaders made or born?

Author: Sachin Paranjape, CFI Coach