Are Leaders Born or Are Leaders Made?

The overarching discussion of “leadership” as a concept often returns to a simple question: Are leaders born, or are leaders made? It’s a chicken-or-the-egg concept, where the two are almost inseparable. With few exceptions, the representative from each group — colony, undergraduate, ambassador, faculty and Supreme Council — had much the same answers.

Belmonte, as the colony member, said that “Leaders are born with various traits, but those traits are fostered as they develop. In other words, they develop those traits through experience and growth.” He combined both elements of the nature-versus-nurture question into an inseparable whole. Fredricks, the ambassador from Central Michigan University, had a similar sentiment. “Leaders are made by the experiences and the people around them,” he says. Some leaders are born with certain capabilities, but other people have to influence them.”

If that’s the case, then, what’s the point of Leadership School for the man who wasn’t born with those innate characteristics? There should certainly be some screening criteria to ensure that the men who attend from each chapter are the ones most ready to accept instruction and to take that difficult next step into the unknown. Knapp, the undergraduate from Rensselaer Polytechnic, offers his own solution. “Leadership training is one of the best things you can get,” he says. “Leaders are often born, but Leadership School helps you develop.”

So, according to Knapp, leadership doesn’t have to be an innate trait; it can be picked up along the way. Like most pursuits, from scholastics to sports, natural talent will only take you so far. Training and study will only take you so far. If leadership is a continuum, with George Washington on the high end and a social hermit on the other, we will each fall somewhere on that line. There is no magic formula, no easy path to becoming a true leader. We all must go through our own trials and overcome our own obstacles to find what lies within us. We have to be forged. “If you’re empowered, you’re made into a leader,” Laux says, speaking as the voice of experience from his three years of being a faculty member. “Leadership skills are made, but you do have to have some inherent qualities.”

Leadership School, then, is one of those trials. It’s a way that Sigma Alpha Epsilon stretches its members’ capabilities, expecting great things from them and holding them accountable when they fall short. “One undergrad was absent for one of our meetings,” Laux says. “On the last day, I had him tell the whole group why he wasn’t there and then I had him leave. The rest of the group could then say what they felt. They all voted that he stay in the chapter and graduate, but it was their decision. He apologized to the group and he owned up to what he did.”

It’s almost sure the brother who had to admit to his shortcomings in front of his small group will never forget that experience, and it’s almost sure that he’s a better man for it. We all need those metaphorical kicks in the pants to get us to understand the larger picture. “The world is not black and white,” Wiglesworth says. “It’s gray. I think most people have in themselves the ability to be a leader. It depends on their environment and upbringing. I’m a prime example. I blossomed with the Fraternity. If it weren’t for that experience, I wouldn’t be the leader I am now. I learned everything in the Fraternity through experiences, but I was born with those traits. Sigma Alpha Epsilon triggered them.”

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