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Today, the question remains, can leaders be made or do they have to be born leaders to be successful?
Leadership has always been at the forefront management training. However, the four functions of management depict leadership as one of the four. For instance, Henri Fayol has been posited as the forefather of the functions of management. While he had more than four in his original publication in France which was translated to English in the 1930s. The four that seemed to stand the test of time are controlling, leading, planning, and controlling.
Leadership, being a strong component of management has manifested itself into the forefront of many executives and aspiring leaders. There are more reasons than one that Henri Fayol included leadership as a function of management. For example, leadership stems from ancient history. The concept of leadership highly manifested itself in ancient extended families that constructed clans as the central ingredient of cities such as Rome. The role of leadership was considerably centralized, and membership in the clans was highly demanding in order to be successful in the social institutions.
Today, the question remains, can leaders be made or do they have to be born leaders to be successful? Before attempting to answer this question, let us agree that leaders can be made and that being a born leader may be an additional attribute of leadership.
Scholars who are experts in leadership illustrate, in an attempt to differentiate the concepts of leadership and management, that while a leader acquires his competencies by embracing education, a manager becomes familiar with managerial activities by undergoing training. The education system is more strategic, synthetic, experimental, flexible, active, and broad when compared to training principles that manifest themselves in being passive, narrow and rote. Moreover, there is a profound difference between leaders and managers. A leader takes a proactive approach towards more strategic goals, and evokes expectations of followers and images for them to follow in the direction of influencing and coaching them. Leadership focuses on challenging the current norms and motivating employees. Followers, as intellectual capital, are trained to think...