Are leaders born or made ?
Wonderful question you have here. I think it is a bit of both. But without sitting on the fence, I will say great leaders have innate traits that makes them perfect fit into that roles, connect to the mind of others and lead people towards a goal.
No matter the inborn traits, a great leaders still have to take a conscious steps into fulfilling that role. All leadership entails mobilising and inspiring People towards achieving a common purpose.
A leadership role is not static. What makes one leader different from another is style and strategies they use in filling that role. Just as no two persons are competely the same, no two leaders are the same.
They come in different with different skills, styles and characters in a different environments/settings, they make for great leaders when they favourably apply these skills, styles and characters to fit situations and stir people to do the unbelievable.
Picking people as a leader based on the 'inbuilt' characters will always be a massive errors as that will take leadership as only a 'ready-made' quality rather than a process. Sometimes the developmental process (which can be adversity) can 'germinate' those minute 'leadership quality and forge a man. How many times have we seen or heard a man rose from 'ordinariness' to the pinnacle of human leadership.
Leaderships are many times wrongly judge solely by eloquence and charismatic. There are other qualities which may not be as flamboyant as above mentioned. There is the ability to be self aware and not self involved. Which involves taking objective stock of oneself, to know and utilize one's strengths and work on the weaknesses.
There is confidence (not arrogance) not only in one's strengths but also in one's vulnerability and fixing them if they can be fixed. Also, there are others like emotional intelligence, good listening skills and vision.
Those skills all these come to some people naturally and put them in great position to be a great leaders. But many of these leadership Skills can be learnt and developed if one put his mind and soul to the task.
Cheers.