I had a discussion with my friend the other day, very interesting I didn't thought it will go that far, but it gave a lot to think about, so here it goes.

ME: You're full of shit everything can be learned, even being the leader and leading people, nothing is genetic.

FRIEND: No dude, let's say it this way you're one of the best students in your faculty and if someone gives you a challenge you take it and you do it, fast and no second thoughts, like me at work I run things so efficent that I don't even think about it. But now remember I bet that you have in your class maybe 3 or 4 people including you that are always raising your hand and are always first to ask if they don't know something and on the other hand you always have those 3 or 4 people that won't raise their hand and ask something they don't understand even if you put a gun to their head, simply because they don't.

ME: Come on you know that what've you just described is just being lazy, when you don't give a shit just because you're bored.

FRIEND: Is it? Than tell me this, you're going on colledge for almost a year and why are those 3 people that "don't give a shit" always the same. And tell me this, how are other areas in their life sorted out I'm guessing not to well.

ME: OK you've got that right, but still someone can be just lazy or stupid and doesn't know what the fuck are profesors teaching us.

FRIEND: Well don't you think that if someone doesn't understand he'll ask.
K. you need to know some people just don't get it and I agree it's mostly cause of their wrong raising as a kid or something like that, but I bet if someone took a 100€ bill out of his wallet and said I'm giving this 100 for free who wants it? They would be the last to stood up go there and took that bill. And now let me tell you something, those who are born to lead they lead, those who are born to lead but they don't know how and they are confused but they are willing to learn it they'll lead and those who aren't born to lead you could implant this knowledge to their brain and they won't lead in a hundred years, cause they don't want to, they aren't willing to lead, they just wait for someone to tell them "OK you can do this, now you do that, now you can go there." and they won't even gonna complain about it, they'll accept it as normal.





So I have given a long thought to this and I still don't believe that this shit is genetic or that you can't learn how to lead, you can but it takes a lot of practice, BUT I admit there are some people that'll never lead cause like he said don't want to, but those people probably don't even ask themselves questions like that and I can say that form that moment on when I had conversation with my friend I became aware of some of those people around me. Sadly the word he said are true and you can see it every day.

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How my life looks like right now: STUDY HARD, PARTY HARD

Firstly, please try to structure your posts a bit better. Frankly, the transcript of your conversation is confusing and hard to follow - we don't need to know word for word so maybe put in some effort and make it clearer, then more people will be able to join the discussion

To me, there are four types of people in the world if you look broadly:
1) Those who are shit at pretty much everything. They aren't smart, they aren't social, they aren't good at sport or physical activity.
2) Those who are average. They don't excel at anything, they don't really totally suck at anything either - this is the majority.
3) Those who are average at most things but good at some things. They get by in most places but there is an area of life they are naturally good at (smart,social,athletic)
4) The people who are good at most things naturally. These are the people who are smart, social and athletic.

I consider this the genetic factor. Everyone is, in my opinion able to improve at something through learning and practice and become a LITTLE better at - while still limited by their genetic ability. This means if you are bad at something, with enough practice you will be average. If your average you can get good and if your good you can become exceptional. The average person will never be able to get exceptional (2 jumps).

So when we take leadership as a model - some people are terrible at taking the lead, most are average (will do it if they have to) and some are good. I think what your friend is saying is that no matter how much you learn and practice, an average person will only ever be a good leader - never exceptional.

We see this everywhere throughout life - some people just do better at things even if they have the same training and know the same stuff as others: its being talented, something that in my opinion is genetic.

I disagree with the two main posters. I think leaders are those who are reliable, assertive and most of all take RESPONSIBILITY. Too many people are scared of the R word and do not like to be responsible for anything that occurs in their lives.

Leadership can be learned by anyone and everyone. It is simply the act of taking responsibility of your surroundings and situations.

I agree it can be learned, but people are still limited by their natural ability as to how good they can get at it. Being a leader isn't black and white, there is good and bad leaders and everything in-between.

Leadership involves skills which are very abstract. What genetic trait gives someone the ability to choose the right sort of reward for their staff?

Sure, you might be naturally aggressive thanks to dads high testosterone count, or naturally intellegent, or naturally empathetic, but this isn't neccessarily good leadership.

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I don't think you can really learn to "lead" in a couple of weeks, but I really doubt any idea of people who are superior in genetics for what are such complex modern tasks.

not only must it be LEARNED, it must be EARNED!

you must step down the valleys before you can rise to the peaks.

You become a bit socially misplaced trying to act all leadery. Im still down in the valleys. just gotta stay away from "just trying to make commands to have your say".

My humble view on this is you have 3 types:

1) The leaders, born it and lives it.

2) Not a leader, thought about it just never really knew he could. Maybe one day he'll learn to (typical poo-ah).

3) This guy cant lead. Never will. Never has. These arent losers or bad guys, dont get me wrong but for whatever reason, they're probably the type of guy who'll do the same thing everyday for the rest of his life.

Number 3 might try and be alpha at times to help him think "hey, see that. Im cool" but most guys dont even realise its an act of amog'ing. If they do, it doesnt phase them.

These are usually the types of people that 'sit out' on things. I grew up with this type of people. They view not speaking to people, not doing someone elses ideas/plans, not replying to a friends text as 'alpha', because they cant TAKE ACTION, only ever pass out on it.

The other 2 types are the ones that end up somewhere. Number 2 may take a while to realise he can, then take even longer to getting his ass around to it but he'll get there.

I dont mean alphaness in a stereotypical way, just a guy who takes action for himself or others.

Problem is, unless you're group number 1, its hard to tell which one you are.

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"You don't want girls to think you suck dick at fucking pussy"
-Seth (Superbad)

Hell dude, Hitler was one of the best leaders in history, but that man was EVIL. I agree with the statement that leadership isn't black and white. And I agree with the statement that leadership can be acquired. It's just that leadership, true leadership rather, is a very difficult thing to learn, you have to change your entire self to learn it, so that's why many people don't learn it, because it is too rigorous. But I say, if you can become a proficient PUA, you can become a proficient leader, because both require you to change to improve yourself.

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Social interactions and fun, that's why I'm here.

I think your looking at it too specifically - there are genetic factors to peoples ability to read peoples emotions, take risks and general social skills that would all help with their ability to read. Some people cannot judge how people will reaction to situations (at least subtle reactions) and these people wouldn't make good leaders no matter how much they learnt simply because you cannot learn for every situation.

I don't think there is a "leadership" gene, but I do think there are genetic traits that help someone be a leader - would you not agree?

Reading emotions, social skills, are the two main qualities you've listed, but these two are always going to be influenced by learning. Outside of the psychopathic or the autistic, most people can garner and nurture such qualities through actively seeking experiences that can develop themselves.

Beyond those traits though, leadership becomes a much more complex activity and competance in certain fields of understanding becomes alot more important than social skills. Social skills and emotional skills are heplful tools but not neccessarily the be all and end all of leadership.

Bill gates himself is known to be... well a fair bit of a cunt and not the kind of guy you'd want round at your house.

Sociable + Empathetic + Takes responsibility = One kind of leader.

Influenced, yes - but someone with a greater natural aptitude for these things is always going to have a greater potential than someone who doesn't. Sure, someone with natural aptitude for leadership but does nothing to develop it will not be a good leader, but assuming experience and knowledge are the same the person with the natural aptitude will always be better than those without.

Its the same as some people being good an languages and others good at maths - they all had the same education (or roughly the same) but some people are just naturally better at those skills. Is it not logical to think certain aspects of leadership are also linked to a natural ability to understand them better?

As a younger teen me and my friends used to try and learn acrobatic moves in a field, we got really good, by the age of 16 we all could do at least backflip. One kid who would watch us when we practised never hesitate to remind us at school "I could do that but I don't have the time/can't be bothered"

This went on till a friend of mine snapped.

"YES! YOU COULD DO THAT, BUT YOU DON'T! You're lazy and shit and its just stupid to listen to you tell us what you could do were you not just so lazy and crap, you want to believe you could do what we do but you don't, you didn't spend 2 hours in a field falling over so you could learn to aerial so don't try and take any credit for it!"

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I'm not one for arguing that individuals can do anything, "if they set their mind to it", but humans are so massively influenced by their social and cultural factors, that it's hard to believe that genetics is much of a determinant past a certain point.

Yeah you could be good with empathy naturaly and a great people person since the age of 6, but that doesn't mean you are "born to lead" in any sense. The idiot who was bullied till he was 18 can still aqquire those social skills in college and then with his superior understanding of organisational business be your line manager, purely because you don't understand the business world and never capitalised on the inherint people skills you had.

This is just a nature vs nurture argument at its core.

In my opinion, nature sets your potential and nurture allows you to achieve it.

No matter how much you train, practice and learn - you will always be limited by your natural ability to do something.

That's quite an un-falsifiable claim about people. Because anytime it may a persons effort that achieves greatness for them, this would chalk it up to "it was their nature all along"