Can Anyone Be a Leader?

Just about everyone wants to be great. Although there are as many definitions people have of greatness as there are people, greatness often includes: having a special impact on other people, recognition by other people, and doing things that lead to a positive change in other peoples’ lives.

Not all greatness involves doing for others. Inner spiritual greatness is also greatness. People who accomplish their own personal goals—like climbing a mountain no one has ever climbed—also have greatness. But for most people, the path to greatness involves doing great things that influence other people—i.e. being a leader.

Are leaders made or born? Do you need special inborn talents to be a leader (and maybe you don’t have them)? Or can anyone become a leader, even if he or she doesn’t have natural superlative talent?

Throughout most of human history, the number of real leaders was small. It generally involved people with charisma and exceptional talent. Leaders like Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, David Ben-Gurion were unique and talented people. They weren’t necessarily role models for most of us.

Can anyone be an influencer?

But the expansion of communication in the world today has created a new market for leadership: “influencers”. Often with millions of followers, they influence people in different ways—which is the definition of leadership.

Can anyone be an influencer? Does it take a special talent to do it, or is just wanting to do it enough?

Many of today’s top influencers have special talents. Soccer players Cristiano Ronaldo (540 million followers on Instagram) and Lionel Messi (424 million followers) are out in front. Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, Selena Gomez, Kylie Jenner all have hundreds of millions of followers.

Celebrities may have had to put in great effort to develop their talents, but they needed those abilities to do the things that made them famous.

World leaders get catapulted to the top by using their political talents to become heads of countries and attain positions of great influence. Ayatollah Khamenei of Iran has 4.9 million followers on Instagram, Vladimir Putin has only 417,000 (he has other interests besides influencing people through the internet).

Politicians can also expand their influence greatly through social media. Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, has 774,000 followers on Instagram, but Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, has 1.6 million. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, a congresswoman with a lot of social media talents, has 1.87 million followers.

But the influence that these leaders have only came because they had the talent to first get elected and establish themselves in government.

Most of the less famous influencers in fields like food, beauty, fashion, sports, lifestyle, photography, fitness and travel (who often reach way more followers than politicians) also got there through their talent in a particular area, which they then successfully marketed on social media.

So one way of developing leadership is to focus on a particular talent that you have, that motivates you, and use it to develop influence.

But I’m Not Exceptional

But that is not applicable to most of us. Not everyone has world-class talents. Can you become a leader if you aren’t a born leader?

Look at what needs to be done in the world and try your best to do something about it.

In Ethics of the Fathers, one of the central books of Jewish wisdom, it says: “In a place where there are no leaders, strive to be a leader.” The Sages were speaking to the person who doesn’t necessarily have the great talent that makes him or her a natural leader. They advise to look at what needs to be done in the world, where there is a great need, and try your best to do something about it.

It works.

Look at Judy Feld Carr, a musicologist in Toronto. In 1973, she and her husband read an article in the Jerusalem Post on the plight of Jews in Syria. The Jews of Syria experienced terrible oppressive conditions and were not allowed to leave. She and her husband set up an organization to lobby for Jews in Syria. That led to secret underground contacts with Jews in Syria, and raising the money to bribe Syrian officials to get Jews out. Even after her husband died, she continued rescuing Jews, in secret for 30 years. She succeeded in getting 3228 Jews out of Syria, a large part of the community.

Or look at Muhammad Yunus, a university professor and entrepreneur in Bangladesh. Seeing the poverty of the villages around him, he came up with the idea of micro-lending, small loans to poor people to promote projects that would help them develop businesses for themselves. The idea caught on around the world, and in 2006 Muhammad Yunus received the Nobel Prize. His creativity certainly helped, but his caring made the crucial difference.

Sivan Yaari, a 20-year old Israeli visiting Africa, saw impoverished African villages and how sick people waited in a hospital for days for treatment. The nurses told her that there was no electricity to run a refrigerator to store vaccines and medicines. From that small beginning, she developed an idea to introduce solar panels to small villages to run refrigerators and electric lights. And from there to use the electricity to run water pumps to bring available ground water to previously arid villages. And to use the water for drip-irrigation. She built an organization called Innovation Africa that, at present, has provided new sources of light, solar energy and clean water to over 3 million people in ten African countries.

Sivan saw a need and acted.

These were all accomplished by people before the internet age. Today with access to a billion people and almost unlimited resources through the internet, the chance to achieve greatness by influencing others for good is unlimited. You just need to know what you want to do, and then try.

Some become leaders due to their inborn talents and abilities. But everyone can make an impact by seeing what the world needs and then doing something effective and meaningful about it. With knowing what you passionately care about, you can change the world.