Among management professionals, there is a question that has always generated some interest: "Is the leader born or made?" The answers are by no means uniform. Some managers bet that the leader is born; others, what is done; Most of them think that the leader is a bit of everything: he is born, but he is also made.
My personal vision, however, departs somewhat from the previous proposals. Rather than being done, the leader -in good measure- is made. Education is the true bulwark of leadership.
«The classic question people ask about leadership is this: Is the leader born or made? Perhaps when the question is asked, the idea of a charismatic leadership, linked to power, blood or factors of another order (religious, family, etc.) floats in the environment.
In some cases, they may even be the children of famous leaders, who in some way could be said to have inherited this condition from their parents or, at least, that inclination that can become a vocation for them. I sincerely think that they are minority cases around which, especially today, the thesis of hereditary leadership could not be supported as the dominant thesis when explaining the phenomenon.
Leaders in the traditional sense of the term jump from the mind without difficulty because they are synonymous with great men (Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Gandhi, etc.). More recently we could say Einstein, John F. Kennedy, John Paul II, Gorbachev, the Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Walea, Mandela, or a few great generals, athletes or scientists. Figures of the first order who have exerted a notorious influence as shapers of today's society.
We do not put in that category characters like Hitler, who can represent a type of leadership in our way of seeing deficient in a fundamental aspect that is the values, which in itself reduces it to a charismatic but manipulative influence on the masses. Let's say it is the leadership or misnamed leadership of such exceptional men in their capacity for evil.
Without going into discussing this type of leadership, it could be said that it is not the one that primarily interests us when we try to answer the question if the leader is born or made. We are not investigating the leaders who are born or who inherit these characteristics, or those who, due to their greatness, have had a particular influence on the communities. It seems to us that he embodies a type of leadership very worthy of being considered.
But here we ask ourselves rather about a leadership that has to do with the human group that surrounds the leader, with the community in which he exerts his influence. So the surface to find these leaders, became broader, because it is not necessarily thinking about great personalities of history or world events.
To answer whether the leader is born or made, we would like to ask ourselves about a leadership that depends more on the effect of the leader on the followers than on the personality of the leader itself or on his exceptional conditions, without ceasing to be important when considering his performance in front of the group in question.
With that idea in front of you, then the most pertinent answer to that question is that the leader is not born but made. This means that we are talking about a leadership accessible to many people, not reserved for an elite or a minority, or for the great people we referred to earlier.
It is a leadership that is assumed, that results or that appears in the lives of many people: in the company, in the family, at school, in the university, in the church, in the government, in politics. It can even be situational leadership, linked to certain circumstances and a type of relationship.
Let's say that there are leaders who not only are not born, but are not necessarily made, as a result of a deliberate process of leadership construction, but rather emerge and grow in certain environments. But there are others who explicitly propose it and become leaders by virtue of the responsibilities they assume and the influence they come to exert over others due to their exemplary behavior and their ability to drive and help to achieve certain objectives..
They are the leaders to whom the statement made by Toynbee corresponds: Those creative personalities who always give successful responses to the challenges of the environment and who by reason of their integrity and their commitment to the group are freely followed by the majority. It seems to us that this definition fairly roughly embodies the essence of leadership, without restricting it to psychological formulas.
Within the thesis that the leader becomes, there is more room for a democratizing and participatory conception of leadership than an elitist one. And it has more to do with a leadership that delegates to the group the possibility of making decisions (democratic leadership) than with an authoritarian leadership (that makes decisions unilaterally or that uses the group as an excuse to pretend participation). »
"The future is in the hands of the youth," said a Spanish thinker, "but the youth is in the hands of those who train it." Education in childhood sows habits that reflect correct behaviors in adult life. An education woven into values guarantees the exercise of effective leadership. Knowing about values is fine, but the important thing is to put them into practice; and practice, the earlier you start the better:
«Do you realize that the most important thing is the beginning of anything, especially if it is young and tender? Well, that's when it takes shape and acquires the modeling that you want to print »(Plato). The family is the true frame of reference of the people. Values are discovered at home and are consolidated throughout life.
