ABSTRACT
When people say that someone is ‘a born teacher’ what do they mean and what are the implications for those teachers who are not? No-one is born with knowledge of the National Curriculum or of administration skills. However, some people are extremely effective in communicating and influencing others, in some cases from an early age. Such individuals are usually socially active and find it easy to make and keep friends, can communicate effectively, listen to others, negotiate, help resolve conflicts, manipulate the behaviour of others and are able to read social situations quickly and accurately. Put simply, they are socially intelligent or socially competent-but what are the characteristics of social competence and are they inherited or learned? Like most areas of social science, there are a number of competing and often conflicting explanations, many of which accept that social competence is a combination of inherited and learned behaviour.
