Are Leaders Born to Lead?

Were you born to be a leader? Or did you learn to become a leader? New research is suggesting that were are perhaps "wired" to be leaders. What do you think?  Read the In Brief below and comment on your leadership styles and techniques.




American Psychology Association - Monitor Magazine

In Brief
Snapshots of some of the latest peer-reviewed research within psychology and related fields.
June 2013, Vol 44, No. 6




Effective leaders' brains may be "wired" to lead, suggests a study from Wake Forest University. Researchers asked 103 West Point Military Academy officers to picture themselves as leaders of a combat unit and then describe the roles they saw themselves filling and the knowledge, skills and abilities they used in those roles. They also tested the participants' leadership and decision-making abilities in a hypothetical tactical military scenario. Then half of the participants underwent an electroencephalography scan so researchers could track activity in particular brain areas. The researchers found that officers who had a more complex sense of their leadership skills, described themselves as filling more leadership roles and showed greater neural complexity were more adaptive and effective leaders. In addition, brain networks in the frontal and pre-frontal lobes of the most complex and adaptable leaders — areas associated with self-regulation, decision-making and memory — were more complex and differentiated compared with those of leaders who were determined not to be very complex (Journal of Applied Psychology, online April 1).