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.
-Jiten Jain a.k.a JJ
