Are we born with leadership skills?

Many people would argue that leaders are born with traits that make them become great leaders and one can't obtain skills to be a leader. Traits are attributes that include aspects such as values, needs, motives, and personality (Yukl, 2006). I would agree with those who believe great leaders are not born, but can be made. Let's look at a general definition of leadership: Leadership is a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal. When viewing leadership as a process, this means that leaders affect and are affected by their followers either positively or negatively. Also, leaders carry out this process by applying their leadership knowledge and skills.  However, we know that we have traits that can influence our actions.

With this being said, I believe that everyone is born with traits but not everyone is willing to use these traits to become great leaders. If you want to be a leader, you will use these traits for the good and continue to possess more knowledge and skills to enhance your traits to ultimately become a great leader. The chart below shows the Process and Trait type of leadership.

References:
Guerrero & Rowe. Cases in Leadership, 2nd Ed.
Concepts of Leadership. 2010. May be accessed at: http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/leadcon.html

Leadership Vs. Management

At first, one might agree that leadership and management go hand in hand and have about the same meaning when actually, they are similar, but have different meanings. A good differentiation is that leadership has followers and managers have subordinates. Management is concerned with organization and planning that is based on immediate results, whereas, leadership is based on guiding a follower to a specific goal. Many philosophers also define leadership as a process. The fact is, no matter how you chose to define the two, after you distinguish the difference between them you will become a better leader and manager.

I witnessed a true example of leadership when I volunteered for a non profit organization in my home town. The organizations goal was to develop a community center for their very small town. The "leader" of the group was self-confident, sociable, and very determined to see her organization prevail. She wasn't getting a lot of support from the community because her goal seemed too far fetched. She was determined to succeed and was sure if she could put in the hard work, her organization would sail. After a year of very hard work and let downs, she was finally able to reach her goal.

This is an example of leadership and management. The organization had a manager who had to organize and make plans based on immediate events, however, their drive and determination inspired others or "followers" to reach out to the children and develop similar organizations. So, can you be a leader and a manager? Yes! The skills to be a leader or a manager are not exclusive.