I’ve never counted. But seems to me the question I’ve been asked most frequently over the years is the one above. For a long time now my answer has been the same – “both.”
The leadership industry would have you believe that leaders are made. Everywhere it implies buy my book, take my course, attend my workshop, enroll in my program, come to my center, pay me to coach you, consult with you, teach you and preach to you and you too can be a leader. All of which might or might not be true – but only up to a point. Up to a point you can make of a sow’s ear a silk purse. But you can succeed in metamorphosing raw material only if you have something as opposed to nothing to work with.
It’s like anything else. You can learn how to be a better swimmer or a better piano player than you are. But you can only learn how to be a great swimmer or a great piano player if you have raw natural talent which, then, over time, is honed and sharpened. Similarly, if Martin Luther King, Jr. ever took a leadership course I haven’t heard about it.
Some people are naturals at being a leader – just like some people are naturals at being anything else. This thought came to mind recently when I read an article about Hadas Fruchter, the pioneering Orthodox Jew who, at age 32, became the first Modern Orthodox woman anywhere to start and lead her own house of worship. (In Philadelphia, in 2019.)
Rabbinat Fruchter was described as a “natural leader.” What was meant by that? That she was the kind of student who was “all over the high school yearbook.” That she was president of her senior class. That she had the lead in school plays. That she was director of the girls’ choir. And that not many years later she was nothing less than a pathbreaker. Notwithstanding her Orthodoxy, she sought to be ordinated. She sought to be ordinated when Orthodox women were not permitted to do so.
When she was still a rabbinical student, Hadas Fruchter’s sermons and teachings were so impressive that she acquired a mentor. Originally, he brought her on as an intern, later she became an assistant spiritual leader. She was on her way to becoming a singular leader in the world of Orthodox Judaism.
The evidence is that Rabbinat Fruchter was a natural. She was a leader in her girlhood. She is a leader in her adulthood. As a result of her seasoning Rabbinet Frucher is probably better at being a leader in her thirties than she was in her teens. Still, from the evidence we have, her talent for leadership was apparent from an early age. Not because her parents or teachers groomed her to be a leader. But because her gift for leadership was inborn.