There are thousands of books written about men and women who have been considered to be great – and reams more about why people consider them great. There are those who historians say were in the right place for the times in which they lived and leadership came to them almost by chance but they proved themselves up to its rigours. There are those who dedicated their entire lives to pursuing leadership and achieved it at a time of great significance. Then there are the many who had a gift for knowing what to do and when; and rebellion or war or change caught up with them. But there is far less written about what really makes a leader.
We are so involved in looking at the character of the individual we forget that populations are trained to look for leaders. That modern societies cannot function without a clique of leaders (and as far as we know that has been true of every society ever) and people, nations, make their leaders.
They say we all give a little bit of power to a figurehead, signified by the voting process in democratic society, but we actually create the system and the reasoning that makes leadership possible.
To this degree no leader has greatness in them, but an aura of greatness painted over them by the millions of citizens they lead.