Leadership today is viewed as a social process wherein leaders and followers interact effectively and participate actively in the leadership actuations (Goertzen, 2013). With the growing proliferation of leadership and leadership development theories, which focused on the educational, experiential, and cultural factors involved in effective leadership, the conceptual environment of leadership is naturally set at showing off the self-made nature of leadership today. However, close observation on the natural behaviors of children will inspire questions on the validity of the claim that leaders are made, not born. A child in the play, for instance, who takes initiative in organizing his or her fellow children into a play group and leading the children to decide on which game to play illustrates raw leadership traits that the child never learned from lectures, adult experiences of leadership, or even from culture (Steinhoff, 2015). The logical question is to ask from where these leadership traits came from given the limited time the child can ever go through what current theorists assume as the bastion of leadership development: leadership training and workshops; leadership roles in the job; on-the-job development, etc.
However, the growing numbers of self-made leaders does not logically prove that natural born leaders do not exist either in the past or in the present in the same manner that the prominence of born leaders in the past did not discount the existence of self-made leaders as history can testify and contemporary leadership literature recognizes. Nonetheless, the argument between the correctness of either contention – that is, whether born leaders are better than made leaders – had to be settled with evidence-based arguments.
This paper attempts to explore these contentions based on available past and contemporary leadership literature in the hope, without clear expectations, that it can be resolved with finality in terms of one being better than the other.
Leaders are born
The perspective of leadership development, which holds that leaders are born, is not a new one. In fact, it is one of, if not, the oldest theory of leadership, which came to be known in leadership literature as the Great Man Theory and originated in 1880 by physician-psychiatrist William James (Mostovicz, Kakabadse, & Kakabadse, 2009; Johnson, et al., 1998; James, 1880). The theory gave rise to the mythology behind the “great leaders” in history, including United States’ Abraham Lincoln, Rome’s Julius Caesar, India’s Mahatma Gandhi, and England’s Winston Churchill. Moreover, it expressed the cultural norm at that era wherein greatness was defined along bloodlines. In those times, leaders were born, not made. Even today, the ‘great leader’ is revered in every field of endeavor and in every echelon of society from Microsoft’s Bill Gates to the Sisters of Charity’s Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
The science, however, came years earlier with Francis Galton in 1869 when he studied the eminence of certain ‘great men’ in various fields, which was statistically attained only by one in 4000 individuals at that time (Johnson, et al., 1998). He discovered that such ‘greatness’ existed with greater prevalence among people of similar family history, which he believed inherited through the genes. Moreover, the Great Man Theory was the predecessor of what is known today as Stogdill’s Trait Theory, which proposed a list of special traits and skills associated abundantly with a great leader (Bolden, et al., 2003).
However, although the direction of theoretical development in leadership since then switched to pure behaviorist (skill is a behaviorist construct) and then functionalist direction, certain organizations continue to assess their leaders through the lens of special leadership traits (e.g. Federal Express’s Nine Leadership Qualities) or a mixture of personal traits and functional-behavioral characteristics (e.g. the NHS Leadership Qualities Framework). This indicates that the Trait Theory, particularly the skill aspect of the human trait, is here expectedly to stay; although the integration of personality traits in contemporary leadership theories can be observed.
Evidence found even in contemporary leadership theories (Goertzen, 2013) indicate that the leadership qualities of a leader, which are essentially innate characteristics and behavioral as well as temperamental tendencies, continue to play an important role in leadership. Psychologists and great leaders themselves appeared to believe that leaders are born, not made, on the basis that leadership cannot be taught to those who had not the innate traits (Silva, 2014). A technically trained leader without the inherent temperament or aptitude of a leader will not grow and develop among leaders of great accomplishments. Thus, even contemporary theories, like Greenleaf’s Servant Leadership (Goertzen, 2013) or House’s Charismatic Leadership (1977), continue to emphasize innate personal characteristics as crucial in delivering transformative impact to those they lead.
Some proponents (Blank, 2001; Steinhoff, 2015) of the born leader theory, however, disagree with the notion that born leaders are genetically programmed to be so. Blank (2001), for instance, contends that the innate aptitude of the born leader must be actualized to manifest. Only when those natural skills and aptitudes become manifest that people recognize born leaders for their effortless, spontaneous, and consistent execution of leadership skills. Subsequently, born leaders need to master specific leadership skills to become truly leaders. However, unlike proponents of made leaders, he recognizes that those innate attributes must be present for a person to master leadership skills. People who do not have the innate attributes will fail to develop leadership skills despite efforts they put into mastering them. They may learn to behave like leaders; but they will not be great leaders. Untalented golfers may learn the techniques of golf; but they will not achieve what Tiger Woods did. A well-trained basketball player may learn to play the balls well; but they will not achieve what Michael Jordan did. With the genetic factor or the talent absent, no great leader will emerge despite the training.
Leaders are made
The traditional viewpoints of leadership as inherited started to shift focus towards leadership behavior when behavioral theorists proposed perspectives that focused on behavioral patterns, which later gave rise to the conceptualization of leadership styles (Bolden, et al., 2003). The earliest behavioristic theories are the Theory X and the Theory Y of Douglas McGregor (1960). Since then, the development of leadership theories eventually shifted from the more personal behavioral framework towards external skill-related frameworks, such as task characteristics and requirements, team management, and even follower counseling (e.g. Adair’s Action-Centered Leadership Model). Certain developments also took increasingly theoretical turns, such as Tannenbaum & Schmidt’s Leadership Style Continuum. However, revisiting of behaviorist leadership perspectives did recur once in a while (e.g. Katzenbach & Smith’s concept of ‘followership’). Although without having to explicitly mention it, the underlying assumptions in the latter theories of leadership hold that leadership is not born but made; that is, developed in the organizational environment and often self-directive and supplied by training and work experience. In a sense, the view that leaders are made, even self-made, may be considered as expressly more dominant in contemporary leadership literature.
Meanwhile, proponents of the made leader theory (e.g. Henrikson, 2006; Simon & Stautzenbach, 2003) are adamant that leaders are not born. Claar, Jackson, and TenHaken (2014) insisted that the concept of servant leadership is incongruent with the idea of born leaders. Born leaders tend to be understood as leaders first before they serve, which is exactly the opposite of the serve-first principle of servant leadership. Conversely, Silva (2014) asserted that academics tend to view leadership skills, except intelligence, as learnable. However, leaders interviewed in like studies attributed their leadership successes not to learnable skills but to innate traits of leaders (e.g., capacity to adapt to conditions; ability for interpersonal relationship; innate conviction to do the correct things; and inherent integrity), which cannot be taught. They even interpreted the positive results in the twin studies as largely influences of environmental factors instead of heritable leadership traits. Farlow (2012) even went to great lengths of denying the reality of talents, which are actually skills developed through “desire, training, and practice”. According to Ernst & Young (2011), entrepreneurial leaders derived their success from experiences gained through education and time spent in corporate environments as well as a conviction that results arise from actions and behaviors.
The scientific claim of the Great Man Theory and the Traits Theory relies primarily on the biological heritability of personal characteristics, specifically leadership traits. Thus, the question on whether leaders are born or made may be objectively settled from evidence gathered in the biological sciences. The most popular, and perhaps the highly internally valid, studies involved twins because of their identical biological characteristics.
Twin studies conducted in the late twentieth century observed high contributions of genetically inherited personality characteristics to offspring up to an average of 40 percent (Loehlin, 1992; Plomin, DeFries, & McClearn, 1990). Today, the heritability of human behavioral traits is already a well-established fact (Johnson, et al., 2009). Bouchard (2004) confirmed that individual differences in most psychological traits, which are reliably measured as either normal or abnormal, are under substantial influence from genetic factors. Olson, Vernon, and Jang (2001) observed that even attitudes are heritable when the attitude factors involved (e.g. personality traits and physical characteristics), are heritable. They found evidence that highly heritable attitudes are relatively stronger psychologically than those less heritable.
And, yet, researchers cannot totally rule out the influence of environmental factors (e.g. familial influence or national culture) that may have subtly interfered with the twin studies (Steinhoff, 2015; Chaufan & Joseph, 2013; Johnson, et al., 2009). Perhaps, this imperfect certainty may be attributed to the limited number of those people with inherited leadership traits to desire occupying a leadership role, which De Neve et al (2013) estimated at 24 percent. In fact, they successfully identified the specific genetic marker, which was associated with the innate predisposition among people who inherited leadership traits to seek leadership roles. The Stratified Systems Theory proposed that a leader naturally rises to the highest level of mental complexities they are comfortable with (Jaques & Clement, 1991). Thus, without the desire to lead, even born leaders will not be recognized as being so (Steinhoff, 2015). Consequently, a related question will be worth investigating in the future: Is desire to lead conditioned genetically? The answer to this will explain while some born leaders lead and others do not.
Despite the potential roles of confounders, the twin studies, nevertheless, largely proved that personality traits, including their differences, can be inherited; thus, providing a scientific basis for potential differences in the stable personality traits between leaders and non-leaders (Johnson, et al., 1998). In effect, there is genetic basis for the heritability of leadership traits.
Beyond theories, evidence indicates that leaders can either be born or made. The biological basis of the born leader, principally through genetic heritability, is already an established fact in genetics and recognized in leadership literature. Moreover, research also showed with similar validity and consistency that leaders can also be born. Current advances in leadership literature helped a lot in advancing effective developmental approaches in the training of effective leaders. In fact, if evidence from biological sciences is to be used as basis, more than half of the leaders today tend to be made leaders than born leaders. Thus, in the argument of born leaders versus made leaders, the valid answer is ‘both’. Both leaders exist.
The only unanswered question remaining is: Which leader is better? Unfortunately, the question is as general as it can be to generate a well-defined answer: that is, better in what? Is it about personal traits? Is it about leadership skills? Is it about achievements and, if so, in which industry or field of endeavor? Or, is it about everything? The answers to the earlier questions are relatively shorter. The latter’s answer can be voluminous to undertake. In either sense, the answers are too long for this paper. Moreover, the leadership literature is not yet capable of answering that differential question as no researcher so far ventured to answer it scientifically.
However, if we limit the question to the level of ease and efficiency in leadership given an equal level of leadership skills as learned, it is highly likely that born leaders are better leaders than made leaders, primarily on the account of genetic heritage, which can provide a natural smoothness (at least to the eyes of the beholders) in the way born leaders can execute leadership activities and responsibilities. In a sense, born leaders have what Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan, or Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, have, which good players and business leaders in either fields do not. In essence, the ‘greatness factor’ is naturally available to born leaders than to made leaders. Made leaders had to be completely willful and masterful to the point of instinct to summon their leadership traits and skills. Born leaders do not have to; these traits and skills come to them with great ease and superb efficiency. In effect, the made leaders will have to struggle harder to achieve what born leaders can with relative ease.
However, this analysis is largely conjectural based on limited, or even on no, specific literature to draw from. The born leaders, made leaders differential studies can be an enormous task to perform considering the saliency of science that has to be utilized to detect the subtle differences between these types of leaders.
In today’s business environment, more made leaders exist than born leaders, making born leaders scarcer and relatively more valuable than made leaders. Only a few companies can acquire such natural leaders as Jack Welch Jr. or Roberto Goizueta in their paid ranks. Talented business leaders, like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, or Steve Jobs, are entrepreneurial leaders that may be beyond the reach of contemporary companies to work for them as non-founding employees. Outside this undefined circle of naturally born leaders, made leaders are in relatively abundant supply that companies still have the chance to recruit to join their ranks.
For companies to improve their capability to recruit made leaders, the following approaches will be needed:
Recruit born and made leaders at the top management: True leaders can easily spot other true leaders; thus, making recruitment of true leaders more efficient and effective at the ground level;
Develop leaders internally: It is easier and more cost-effective to recruit potential leaders and then develop and hone them for higher responsibilities along the way.
Recruit potential leaders whenever feasible: Certain industries (e.g. medical services) have limited opportunities to develop made leaders due to their very nature. Technical experts, such as programmers, mathematicians, and scientists, tend to enjoy more their line of professional expertise rather than lead employees or the entire company. The greater pool of leadership talents the better.
In the same manner that environmental factors cannot be discounted in the leadership development of a leader over genetic inheritance, the reality of the born leader cannot be discounted as well (Steinhoff, 2015; Chaufan & Joseph, 2013; Johnson, et al., 2009). It is clear that the development of theories favoring either the notion of leadership as born or made experienced significant influence from the shifts in the cultural assumptions where these theories originated. The Great Man Theory, for instance, appeared in an era when aristocrats dominated the societal norms and the lineage of the kings and the nobles accepted as the sole factor in the society’s leadership development. Children born among the kings and the nobles were expected to be leaders being born of leaders and reared in the household of leaders.
However, as democratic structures dominated the contemporary societies, people without noble bloodlines can claim leadership roles in their field of choosing. Thus, the perceived aristocratic conditions creating the notion of leadership as born are now being challenged by self-made leaders who have proven themselves as leaders without the benefit of bloodline.
Nevertheless, the reality remains that more made leaders are available for employment than born leaders. Made leaders can bring important achievements for the company; thus, can take the ball rolling well until the born leaders arrive. However, at times, companies must move on even without born leaders to lead them. It is one of those things beyond their control.
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