What is Leadership?

When you include a word like "leadership" in the title of your blog, I think you should at least attempt to clarify what it actually means. I apologize for the academic referencing embedded within-it is the academic within me. It is my hope that my creative potential resurfaces over the course of my yearly blogging journey!

Although leadership has become a highly publicized and popularized concept, it remains difficult to define precisely. Leaders were once viewed as powerful people who possessed the knowledge, control and ability to succeed through structured goal attainment, which was predominently dictated by organizational outcomes. More recently, leadership has been described in terms of social influence rather than position (e.g Bass's (1995) Transformational Leadership Model). Transformation leaders facilitate positive change within themselves and others in order to provide the motivation necessary for constant improvement.

According to many predominent leadership models (Bass, 1995; Sashkin and Rodenbach; 1998; Kouzes and Posner, 2002; Alimo Metcalf and Alban Metcalfe, 2005) leaders:

• inspire and motivate others to exceed expectations.
• convey a collective vision that is based upon shared aspirations.
• encourage creative problem solving and innovation.
• embrace change and are prepared to take risks and make difficult decisions.
• empower and value others by respecting each individual’s needs, recognizing individual contributions and encouraging personal growth and development.
• build trust by acting with integrity, humility and consistency.
• communicate exceptionally by actively listening to others, consistently conveying new and important knowledge, and ensuring that they communicate clearly.

Leadership is viewed as a quality that can be shared by all, regardless of position, influence, personality-type or task orientation. Leadership is truly viewed as a quality that exists within everyone. In its simplest form then, leadership can be described as the desire to bring out the best in oneself and others, while inspiring positive change.


References:

Alimo-Metcalfe, B. and Alban-Metcalfe J. (2005) Leadership: Time for a new direction? Leadership 1:51-71.

Bass, B.M. (1995) Theory of transformational leadership redux. Leadership Quarterly 6: 463-478.

Kouzes, J.M. and Posner, B.Z. (2002) The Leadership Challenge, 3rd Edition. Jossey-Bass, CA. 458p.

Sashkin, M. and Rosenbach, W.E. (1998) A new vision of leadership. In Rosenbach and R.L. Taylor (Eds.) Contemporary Issues in Leadership 4th Edition (pp. 61-83) W.E. Westview Press, USA.