Leadership skills learned or innate Class Consider the follo

Leadership skills: learned or innate? Class, Consider the following question regarding leadership: Are individuals born with advanced traits or are there factors associated with their upbringing and environment that create qualities others are willing to stand behind and follow?

Solution

Ans: Leadership quality are associated with their upbringing and environment that create qualities others are willing to stand behind and follow, Leaders are not born, they are made the environment and upbringing create them, leaders have to learn,leadership doesn\'t exist naturally,individual have to learn.

I believe that some qualities that make effective leaders are innate - charisma, gregariousness, projecting confidence. But to a large degree, leadership skills must be learned.

Leaders must learn how to motivate people to follow them. Leaders must learn to communicate their vision to their followers. Leaders need to be willing to step out and be willing to risk being rejected.

Looking at the trait and skill approach, it is clear that the obvious difference lies in whether rely on innate traits, or leaned skills. Are we born with personality characteristics that make us good (or bad) leaders, or do we learn certain skills and abilities through our experiences and external/internal influences, which influence our leadership approach?

In 2005, Sternberg developed the WICS Model of Giftedness in Leadership, which suggests that people are both born with certain leadership abilities/characteristics, and have developed skills throughout their lifetimes which make for successful leaders. The WICS model looks at wisdom, intelligence, creativity and synthesizes skills and attitudes, all of which comprise a giftedness in leadership. Sternberg suggests that successful leadership, however, is more likely attributable to practical skills (which are acquired from previous experiences), than from academic intelligence (which is often thought to be innate).

It is therefore conceivable, that both the skills and traits approach to leadership have merit. “Great” people are born with, and possess, necessary leadership qualities, AND also leaders can develop necessary technical, human and conceptual skills (Katz, 1955) which in turn make them great.