Leaders are born or made

It is necessary to first define both natural-born and learnt leadership skills in order to be able to establish whether or not natural-born with leadership abilities can be taught. This is the most important part. This will go a long way toward making a clear decision about the protagonist regarding whether leadership skills are innate or born with or if they can be learned.

Learning skills, action or daring to do things, thinking or cognition, feeling or emotion, and accessing people or social skills are innate, indicating that the skills are available at birth and are only honed via the learning process. Similarly, the leadership traits of challenging, motivating, enabling, modeling, and encouraging are intrinsic abilities that are developed through education. A fundamental requirement for leadership is the capacity to influence the ideas and perspectives of a significant number of others (Brown and Posner, 2001).

Having established that the leader's position requires greater dexterity and wisdom, another aspect of the investigation would be the type and involvement required of the subject by the leader as a measuring stick of the leadership characteristics, the time historical bearing of leadership, which is embedded in leadership styles from the past to the present to determine which characteristics predominate (Ackoff, 2005).

Leadership is more an art than a science. Leaders possess both skills and attributes. There are some characteristics and skills that people expect a leader to possess. Numerous world-changing figures rose to power not by birth but through their actions. The abilities a leader must have, the attributes a leader should have, the competence a leader exhibits, as well as the leader's knowledge and insight, can be fostered, and so a leader can be cultivated or created.

Some of the greatest leaders in recent history include Nelson Mandela, Sir Winston Churchill, and Mahatma Gandhi, to mention a few, go down in history as extraordinary leaders, but also because they acquired leadership qualities via life experiences. They motivated and inspired their followers to achieve their objectives

Brown, L.M. and Posner, B.Z. (2001) “Exploring the relationship between learning and leadership,” Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 22(6), pp. 274–280. doi:10.1108/01437730110403204

Ackoff, R.L. (2005) “What constitutes leadership and why it can’t be taught,” Handbook of Business Strategy, 6(1), pp. 193–196. doi:10.1108/08944310510557459..