How to Be Exceptional: Drive Leadership Success By Magnifying Your Strengths

APPENDIX AAre Leaders Born or Made?

We know of no debate that has gone on longer than this simple question, “Are leaders born, or are they made?” Highly respected researchers have emphatically declared their position in favor of one side of the debate or the other.

For example, in a 2002 article “Are You Picking the Right Leaders?” in the Harvard Business Review, an industrial and organizational psychologist, Melvin Sorcher, and his colleague James Brant¹ wrote, “As far as executive leadership is concerned, people are relatively complete packages by the time they arrive on the corporate doorstep.” Later in the article, they said, “Our experience has led us to believe that much of leadership is hardwired in people before they reach their early ...