What is Leadership?
A couple of weeks ago The Daily Biz posted about what makes a group of people a “team”. While it’s true that teams are typically more horizontally aligned (with no power hierarchy), organizations cannot and should not exist entirely along this model. Leaders are necessary. Beyond that, a healthy organizations oftentimes have many employees from senior executives on down to the janitorial staff that personify leader-ish values of ownership, initiative, and integrity.
But what is “leadership”? Businessdictionary.com takes a winding road on this one. They list several key aspects of leadership. Settle in and read this; I’ll meet you on the other side with some thoughts:
In its essence, leadership in an organizational role involves (1) establishing a clear vision, (2) sharing (communicating) that vision with others so that they will follow willingly, (3) providing the information, knowledge, and methods to realize that vision, and (4) coordinating and balancing the conflicting interests of all members or stakeholders.
So Businessdictionary.com takes a very “vision-centric” approach to the definition. The will to execute a vision is one key component of leadership. I especially like #2 and #3- they fit in well with discussions of modern management and individual leadership efforts.
The Daily Biz will continue examining leadership in future posts detailing the different styles of leadership. Charismatic, transformational, servant… the list of leadership styles is long and each one has something to offer.
