Questi 7 If so Point Counteroint What is a What a LEADERS ARE BORN, NOT MADE n t

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Questi 7 If so Point Counteroint What is a What a LEADERS ARE BORN, NOT MADE n the Unibed States people are socialiced to believe they can be whoever they want to be-and that includes being a leadet think The Lile f course, personal qualities and charectenistics leadership, as they do to most other behavies B t makes for anice children's tale ithinià is what you de with what you have First, if great leadership ere merely the possession of raits-say inbeligence and personalny- we could simply g ple a test and select the most incelligem, extaverted, and tious people to be leaders But that would be a disaster have these traits, but leadership is much too complex to be to a simgle formula of traits As smart as Steve Jobs is,thee smarter and more extraverted people out there-thousands ef That isn't the essence of what makes him, or political or ers, great. Ris a combination of fac experiences, learning from failure, and driving ambition and people's ives are not always wrapped in pretty packages and this is one example Being an effective leader has more to do what you do with what you have That leaders are bom, not made, ian't a new idea. The Victonian- era historian Thomas Carlyle wrote "History is mathing but the biography of few great men." Although today we should modly educet s, there this to inclade women, his point still rings true: Great leaders are what make teams, companies, and even countries great Can any one disagree that people ike Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt were gifted poldical leaders? Or that Joan of Are and George Patton were brilliant and courageous military leaders? Or that Henry Ford Jack Welch, Steve Jobs, and Rupert Murdoch are gitfhed business leaders? As one reviewer of the literature put it, Leaders are not hke other people. These leaders are great lead ers because they have the right stuff-stulf the rest of us don't Second, great leaders tell us that the key to their leade success is not the characteristics they had at birth but what learned along the way Take Warren Bufflett, who is admired not only for his prowess but also as a leader and boss. Being a great lea according to Buitfett, is a mater of acquiring the right habits. Th chains of habit are too light to be noticed until they are too heany t be broken," he says. Buffett argues that characteristics or ha such as intelligence, trustworthiness, and integrity are the mo important to leadership-and at least the latter two can be deve oped. He says, "You need integrity, inteligence and energy to su ceed Integrity is totally a matter of choice-and it is habit-forming nvesing have, or have in lesser quantities If you're not yet convinced, there is new evidence to support this position. A recent study of several hundred identical twins sep- arated at birth found an amazing correlation in their ascendance into leadership roles. These twins were raised in totally different environments-some rich, some poor, some by educated parents others by relatively uneducated parents, some in cities, others in small towns. But the researchers found that, despite their different environments, each pair of twins had striking similarities in terms of Finally, this focus on "great men and great women" is not en productive. Even i it were true that great leaders were born, ts very impractical approach to leadership. People need to believe i something, and one of those things is that they can improve the selves. If we walked around thinking we were just some accumu tion of genetic markers and our entire life was just a stage in which our genes played themselves out who would want to live that wa People like the optimistic story of The Little Engine That Cou because we have a choice to think positively lwe can become ood leaders) or negatively (leaders are predetermined), and it's beter to be positive.5 whether they became leaders Other research has found that shared environment-being raised in the same household, for example-has very litle influence on leadership emergence. Despite what we might like to believe, the evidence is clear A substantial part of leadership is a product of our genes. If we have the right stuff, we're destined to be effective lead ers. If we have the wrong stuff, we're unlikely to excel in that role eadership cannot be for everyone, and we make a mistake in think g that everyone is equalily capable of being a good leader

Explanation / Answer

My reaction to this debate is that a person becomes a leader with the combination of his genetic predisposition as well as because of efforts to develop themselves through reactions to environmental factors as they grow big. Some innate traits are also important in order to become a leader which a person gets when he is born. These persons then are nurtured through training, hard work, and experiences which then result in the development of these outstanding leaders. People have to be motivated to use their inbuilt traits whenever environment and circumstances demands.

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