"Leaders are born and not made." Explain this.

Many psychological, neurological, and
sociological tests have been conducted by scientists to discover if
leadership truly can be a learned trait, and studies generally indicate that
leaders truly are born with different personality traits
and different thinking skills that make them leaders rather than
followers.

Geneticists at
the University College London experimented on 4,000
individuals to find that those who are supervisors all have the rs4950 gene. Also,
psychologists and neuroscientists at the Wake Forest
University, North Carolina, discovered that those in leadership positions
have more brain activity in their frontal and
prefrontal lobes. The frontal lobe is responsible for cognitive skills,
such as expressing emotions, solving problems, the ability to judge, and the ability to
retain memory and use language skills. The prefrontal lobe is involved in even more
complex cognitive skills, such as making decisions, regulating social behavior, and
expressing personality. All of the above skills are critical for leadership
roles.

In addition, a joint sociology and animal
behavior study on stickleback fish at the University of
Cambridge showed that the leadership role cannot be
learned. Stickleback fish are group animals, and within the group,
different fish show different levels of boldness; the bolder fish initiate an activity,
such as coming out of hiding to forage, while the shyer fish follow. The scientists took
pairs of shy and bold fish and used food rewards to try and change the behavior of both
the leader and the follower. What they found is that, while the leader
could be trained to learn to follow, the follower could
never be trained to be bold enough to
lead.

Hence, though some scientists still question if
leadership skills can truly be learned, other scientists
conclude that while some leadership skills can be learned, there will
always be certain people for whom those skills come more easily, just like math skills
come easily to certain individuals while language skills come more easily to others. All
people, within limits, can be taught to learn more math and language skills, but those
who are weak in math or language will always struggle more with the subject. The same
holds true for leaders. We can learn leadership skills, but
it's not the skills alone that make us actual
leaders.