ARE THE LEADERS BORN OR MADE

HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT ASSIGNMENT

MBA (INNOVATIVE MANAGEMENT)

BRITISH INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY AND E-COMMERCE

STUDENT NAME: TARIQ AZIZ

STUDENT ID: 39299

TUTOR NAME:
Leadership and leadership style:

Leadership is the position of office, head of the political party or other body of people having the
ability to guide, direct, or influence people. Leadership is often a dynamic activity concerned
with changing attitudes. They are more inspirational and involve more emotional input than
management. The manner in which tasks and functions of leadership are conducted is the
leadership style. The Siemens has developed its own kind of leadership and leadership style to
achieve the organizational goal and objective:

• Selecting right people in the right place for right job and proper management of people
will be motivated themselves to do good job.

• Every employee are given a direction which is put into the plan i.e. business strategy. So
every individual employee work in high performance and portfolio, taking operational
excellence and corporate responsibility.

• People excellence is building high performance, culture, helping them more than a given
responsibilities, trusted and each individual efforts are valued and are doing something
worthwhile.

• Making employees valued and engaged them for individual achievement along with the
organization goal achievement.

• Providing everyone equal opportunities to develop their own specialities and to acquire
further expertise like Simon’s Leadership Excellence Program.

Discussion on the leaders (are they Born or Made):

For decades, researchers are trying to know about the leaders if they are born or they are being
made with the help of behaviour. The discussion goes on and on although people have answers
in the minds. Well, the research shows that leadership and the leaders are of both the natures;
leaders are sometimes born leaders and sometimes they are being made to lead the population.
Some researcher argue that leaders are always born with the qualities that are required for a
successive leader while the opposite side says that leaders can be made with the help of behavior
by developing these qualities in them.
 Born leaders:
According to the researchers, if a person is a leader by birth, he only needs to have one quality in
him by birth and that are he should be intelligent. And these leaders should be smart enough for
other to follow them. Efficient leaders don’t have to be the smartest among all in the team,
group, organization or a community, but they should be able to do the tasks what they are
supposed to do effectively. The other important thing is to know how a born leader behaves
when he becomes an adult. This is because when a born leader becomes adult he has the traits
and psychological characteristics in him that show his qualities to lead for whole of his life.

When a born leader becomes an adult, people can recognize that this person has the qualities and
can assist the other members to achieve the goals. That is what everybody expects from a leader.
Members and the other people want them to attain the objectives through the team work and
grown and develop the other team members. People recognize a leader by his acts and know that
this person can make decisions because for normal people, every person wakes up in the morning
and faces what comes to him and doesn’t change it.

There are some traits such as intelligence, hard working, honest and smart that is essential to be
recognized as a born leader. People who have these skills can become multi skilled and can be
effective leaders for others to follow them for all of their career and life. But even leaders have to
learn how to do the task even if they are leaders by birth.

Leaders can be made:

According to the researchers who support the view that leaders can always be made when they
are learned and developed the skills and qualities that a required to become a successful leader,
say that these qualities can be learned by anyone so any one can become a leader. They also
argue that the perfection of the leadership cannot be taught though. They say that it is because
leaders are like apprentices who only learn about a certain percentage of their jobs and skills.

These researchers also argue that these people learn from the existing leaders by adopting their
behaviour. They select them as their role models and also look out for their guidelines. They also
take their advice about handling any uncertain situations. These people improve themselves by
asking for the feedback of their work and getting hints from this feedback. This feedback can be
taken from their existing leaders, bosses, subordinates and the peers. After that, they change their
behaviours according to the feedback and by following the leaders. Successful leaders always
have control on their own developments. They always look out for the opportunities that can
have an impact on their skills, experience and performance.

Howard Morgan and Marshall Goldsmith analysed the progress of 88 thousand management
people who attended the training for leadership development. When these people came back
from training to their work places, they talked about their training and did hard work to employ
the lessons they learned while on training; they were seen as more successful than before.
According to researchers, companies should develop their leaders by helping the people to learn
specific skills, training and the qualities they need to become an effective leader.

Growth of leaders is endless:

Learning is a never ending activity and this applies on leadership learning too. The leaders never
become perfectionist that’s why they have always something to learn. There are always some
skills the leaders still need to learn. Successful leaders as mentioned above always look out for
the opportunities to learn more skill through extra project assignments or changes in the job
tasks. What the leader always need to learn is the skills they can use everywhere in every project
ad in every assignment and for every different area.

In fact, there is no specific formula that can develop the leadership skills or qualities. But the
companies have to choose the people that have basic traits of the leaders and then work on these
people to polish them. The companies can polish them by giving them feedback on their work
assignments, by giving them training, other learning methods and the companies should make
them responsible for their results.

A Leader can be anyone: All human beings have a time in their lives when they have a talent
and opportunity for success. If they feel passionate at that time in this area, they can show their
qualities that cannot be shown in the other areas of their lives. They may not be born leaders at
the first instant, but they can surely face the hurdles and grow an ability and desire to lead other
when they are passionate about it.
Leadership development:

There are different methods and approaches that can be used to develop the leadership skills
aside from the passion that people have and these methods are given below;

• They can attempt to enhance communication capability, particularly the capability to pay
attention to others
• They should be enthusiastic about taking risks
• They should arrange and seek for means to enlarge their contacts
• They should pay attention to live and work with others with respect and integrity
• They should always support other members to seek the leadership qualities for
themselves
• They should have confidence in themselves and in their abilities
• They should recognize their strengths and should not hesitate to take guidance from
others
• They should have a vision and should communicate this vision to convince others
• They should always sense optimistically and focus on reaching the objectives

Cultures:

Culture is the collection of traditions, values, policies, beliefs, and attitudes that constitutes a
pervasive context for everything we do and think in an organisation. Culture could also be
defined as the collective self-image and styles of an organisation; its shared values and beliefs,
norms and symbols (“The way we do things around here”).

The source of organization culture is related to the behaviour pattern and relationship develops
over a period of time between the organization manager and workforce while doing things to
achieve the same goals and objectives. Their culture exist when everyone share their same
vision, trust and value each other’s contribution which is happen Siemens company. The
organization believes in their workforce and most valuable resources particularly in today’s
changing worlds. For making employee true involvement in the business and generating inner
feeling for organization success each employee are fitted into the business establishing clear
expectation targeting individual to target whole business because success of the business depends
upon the performance of each individual team and the total organization. Besides that the
organization concerned with human resource development containing four main elements:

i. Achieving a high performance culture

ii. Increasing the global talent pool

iii. Strengthening expert careers

iv. Siemens’ Leadership Excellence Programme (SLE)

In the organization culture everyone are provided with the guidance and support to achieve their
full potential aids them to do best every day. They are sharing work together with same dream
and vision to achieve organization objective as well as meeting their own personal goal, So that
they are able to progress and take a great responsibility within the company. Everyone has talent
and encourages taking an extra task and responsibilities within an existing job role to make work
more rewarding and scope of the existing job is extended to give a broader range of
responsibility plus extra knowledge and skill development. The talent management is a key
supporting each elements of the organization’s business strategy and making managers to
leadership for motivation and engagement of employees throughout the organization.
References:

Anonymous, (2009): ‘Are great leaders born or made’ available at;

http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/07/16/are-great-leaders-born-or-made/ accessed on
27/03/2010

Anonymous, (2009): ‘born or made’ available at

http://www.threestarleadership.com/articles/bornormade.htm accessed on 27/03/2010

http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/Organizational_culture/id/2015406

Accessed on 22/03/2010

http://changingminds.org/disciplines/leadership/styles/participative_leadership.htm

Accessed on 22/03/2010

Fremont Ellsworth Kast, James Erwin Rosenzweig (1985) “Organization and management: a
systems and contingency approach”, Fourth Edition [E-book]

Gary Dessler (1986): “Organization theory: integrating structure and behavior” 2nd Edition,
Prentice-Hall Inc.

Russell, Ivan L. (1971) ‘Motivation’ , WC Brown Co (Dubuque, Iowa)

Aldag, Ramon J. (1979), ‘Task Design and Employee Motivation”, Foresman and Company
USA

Herzberg, Fredrick (1976), “The Managerial Choice, To be efficient and to be Human, Dow
Jones, Irwin USA.

Ferguson, Diane B. (1987), “Management style and employee Motivation”

Hamner, W. Clay and D. Organ (1978), “Organization Behaviour an applied Psychological

Approach” Business Publication, USA