What makes a person a great leader? (Lede/ TL;DR/ Spoiler: Learning makes a great leader.) There was a time when leadership was thought to be the result of innate personal traits. In 1840, Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle gave a series of lectures on heroism in which he proposed that human history is defined by “great men” with qualities that empowered them to transcend society and lead others. Open-Source Learning is yours. Free.Get the white paper here Apart from being a sexist artifact ...