Before taking sides first let us discuss the attributes of a good leader –

  • The most important pre requisite for leaders is to have good professional knowledge and professional competence irrespective of the field or organization they belong to.
  • Leaders should have the ability to take decisions and take full responsibility of them. It is because of the lack of this quality, projects are delayed, costs escalate, money and at times lives are lost. A person who does not take a decision lacks confidence. Lack of confidence is often a result of lack of professional knowledge and competence.
  • Leaders should have moral as well as physical courage. In case a person lacks moral courage, he/she ends up becoming a yes person and is likely to be used by superiors for their undue favours, and also cannot earn respect from his/her subordinates.
  • Leader should be absolutely just and impartial.
  • Leader should be disciplined and should have a strong character. Honesty, discipline, truthfulness are parts of character, but a leader should know his/her strengths & weaknesses well, knowing what he/she really is and should not get deluded by the affection of fans, family etc.
  • Apart from these hardcore characters, leaders should also have a human touch, empathy, humour. So that he/she can understand people, their issues and problems better. When going gets tough, leader should be able to uplift the mood and morale of subordinates with the sense of humour and liveliness.

Now looking at the above mentioned pre requisites for a person to be a leader, we can easily say that a person may have some, not all leadership qualities by birth. Like he/she may be a cheerful person by birth but no one is born with professional knowledge or competence. As a matter of fact no one is born with any of the hardcore attributes discussed above. They all develop over time according to the conditions, environment and values in which a child is brought up, place where a person works, aspirations and goals of a person and the circle with whom he/she hangs out with.

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Conclusion :-

It can be inferred logically from the above article that leaders are made and not born. And a person with reasonable common sense and decency can be turned into a leader when subjected to proper practices and surroundings.

These thoughts are taken from the ‘Speech on Leadership’ By Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw.

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6 Comments

  • Yash Kumar Sah, Mar 8, 2021 @ 3:14 pm Reply

    I would say Leaders are born but various life situation brings that leadership quality from within a person. For example, let’s talk about Hitler. Was Hitler the only German who suffered a lot due to 1st world war? Of course not, there were millions of germans who suffered and so did Hitler. But those sufferings brought out the leadership traits of Hitler which was already there within him and just needed a push from outside.

  • De marco, Jan 30, 2020 @ 2:24 am Reply

    Leader are made not born, because you practice or learn to be a leader but you was not born as a leader

  • Sieera, Apr 28, 2019 @ 2:38 pm Reply

    Yes is true leaders are made and not born . As looking down in memory lane we can see great leader from very simple and low status reached to a great platform and lead as great leaders . So it’s clear that they learn all these things by surrounding by adversity they faced by moral values they learnt . And first of all by their character by which they decided what is right for their followers.

  • Tinku Paul, Apr 27, 2019 @ 7:25 am Reply

    According to me leaders are born not made . They have loving and compassionate attitude , they want to do something for other, they are not selfish. They have capacity to raise their voice from their early age where any wrong going on any person nor our society. They are always special from their early age, people can specify them from others . We know Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and his life history but just right now I have been watching serial in the TV there is showing small, small incidents in his life in the very early age . When British was ruling our country , peoples were getting torture in our society He was raised his voice that time he was small child , even He left English medium school and took admission in Bengali medium school and He was so sympathised for the freedom fighters in the early age , He was crying for them as innocent people were suffering. several incidents are there. But nowadays leader they have muscle power and .money , they want to take the advantages, as they have power. They do wrong and want to suppress it. They use innocent people yes some persons are there they want to do something for the people and do something for our country. Their behaviour ,way of talking, loving attitude and compassion for others and they do for the people but they are not selfish . They don’t think for their own.

  • Tamil, Apr 24, 2019 @ 10:23 am Reply

    Update the topics

  • Aditi Kumari, Apr 24, 2019 @ 9:37 am Reply

    Leaders are made not born. It’s a true fact because everyone in the world born with equal talents that is inherited from our parents. And we have some similar characteristics as our parents have such as behavioural characteristics, configuration such as size and colour etc. But most of the characteristics we are inherited from our surroundings and evironment. As we know that leaders have many such qualities and sub qualities that is gained through practice, training and experience. Leaders also have many technical and advanced knowledge that differ them from others. By researches, psychologist also proved that in the main, leaders are mostly made not born. Only one third qualities a person inherited by birth and two third qualities from experience to lead group of people, to motivate and inspire them to achieve a common goal. Leaders also have the effective listening quality ,decision making and problem solving qualities . It also needs some emotional intelligence to understand people by heart and have some ethical values which is gained through learning or by attending workshops. And social interaction plays a very important role in leadership qualities and one have to become extroverts because introverts can never lead group of people. They just conerned on their self development. And one of the most important quality is self confidence which is gained through exploring oneself in the world. Thanks

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