Are Leaders Born or Made? A Disquisition on The Great Person and Christological Paradigms of Leadership

Name of Author : Dr. Christopher Alexander Udofia

Abstract: The scientific study of leadership actually begun in the 20th Century, though, the word “leader” has been in public lexicon since the 1300s. In spite of the fact that people have exhibited leadership in various climes and times, the development of scientific understanding of leadership was actually initiated with the emergence and evolution of the different theories of leadership. The Trait and the Christological models of Leadership which constitute the subject of our examination are some of the paradigms propounded to explain the concept of leadership. The trait model of leadership avers that the possession of certain innate traits is what qualifies for leadership, hence a person is potentially a leader if he or she is born with some predisposing traits. The Christological model, in the alternative, posits that a leader is made via serving as a servant. Thus, leadership in the Christological model is synonymous with servanthood. The prime foci of this paper include doing a thorough discursive unveiling of the tenets of these leadership models and subsequently subjecting those tenets through the anvil of philosophical scrutiny so as to test their reasonableness in the light of philosophical disquisition.

Keywords : Leadership, Traits, Christological, Model, Disquisition

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