Are Leaders Born or Made

Essay by OlechkqUniversity, Bachelor'sA-, January 2009

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Following the historical development of leadership practices Nahavandi (2003) describes two eras one that beard a belied that leaders are born and the one following it has the idea that leaders are made. Interestingly enough Nahavandi (2003) first describes the era of when people thought that leaders are born, however after just 100 years they made an assumption that they are made, therefore as Garic (2007) has put it that with experience people's attitudes might change, so did they towards leadership. However there still remain authors that point out that leaders cannot be born and give reasoning and others that oppose and say that you cannot make somebody a leader if he was not born with this. There have been a lot of disputes outlining the advantages and disadvantages of both ways of thinking, however still authors could not come to one opinion.

Avolio(1999) holds a point of view that leaders are made since extensive training is required in any case, therefore those who considers that leaders are born will not be able to explain why then leadership training and development classes are held in order to make a leader more effective.

Garner (2005) opposes to this saying that leaders are born however it takes certain efforts in order to become a leader, he says that it is not enough to be born with certain qualities a person also has to understand how these could be used in order to produce results.

Summing up the two opinions is Bock (2006) answers this question in an affirmative manner; he says that the answer has been found long ago however different authors still keep debating about its implication. Bock says that leaders are both made and born, he says that it cannot be just one of the two because otherwise we would...