What is Leadership?

Leadership: Serving Others

Explain leadership?

Leadership is a complex subject. Especially when we begin this new millennium, leadership development is being considered an increasingly important part of a college education. Hence, we must first examine the meaning of leadership.

While there are few precise definitions to it, we would like to list some notions that best contribute to our understanding of leadership, though none can stand alone as the defining set of assumptions. By viewing leadership through multiple lenses, it will bring us closer to comprehending it.

#1 "Leadership is the ability to inspire confidence and support among the people who are needed to achieve organizational goals." (Chan & Maubourgne 1992)

#2 "Leadership is an act that causes others to act or respond in a shared direction." (Dublin & Daglish 2003)

#3 "Leadership is the willingness

to take the blame." (Zaslow

1998)

#4 "Leadership is the art of influencing people by persuasion or example to follow a line of action." (Dublin & Daglish 2003)

#5 "Leadership is a “we” thing that requires both leader and employee." (Tjosvolds 1995)

#6 "Leadership is today is too complex and challenging to be left to one person; it’s only successful when done together." (Tjosvolds 1995)

#7 "Leadership is when you spend 10% of your time with your staff so that your staff wants to follow you 90% of their time." (Simonton 2002)

The list could go on. For no single, straightforward definition captures its essence, one basic assumption underlies the framework for understanding leadership, and that can be expressed in terms of a simple formula which we agree, has a profound meaning:

L = f (l, gm, s)

The formula speaks of the leadership process as a function of the leader, group members and other situational variables (Hersey, Blanchard & Johnson 1997). In short, when we talk about leadership, we have to take into consideration all factors related to the leader, the persons led and the variety of influences in the environment.

Stephen Covey, being eminent as leadership expert and author, says that we ‘lead people and manage things’. To put it in a simpler framework, it is a process of getting tasks done through people. During the process, working through people is important to achieve the established aims. (! try relating this to the formula)

Warren Blank (2001) mentioned in his book that leadership is also an adventure, for there can never be an absolute guarantee that the drive to success would not end up in a gaffe. But what matters is that the leader creates a vision to direct his team. And the leader establishes leadership as a discovery, by doing things differently, either doing existing things better or doing different things in accomplishing goals. In a more complex situation, it is often necessary to discover new directions through trial and error. Therefore, leadership can be seen as a series of acquired skills. Leaders effortlessly, spontaneously, consistently demonstrate those special skills that make others to willingly follow (Blank 2001).

It is not forget that leadership comes hand in hand with responsibility. According to the Boy Scout of America, the leader is the one others look upon to get the job done. Then again, the leader must be willing to go to places he leads others to. (New LTW 2001)

Leadership can best be understood through metaphors and described indirectly through paradigms (Shriberg & et. al. 2002). A good example to apply the principles of leadership to is to look at a scouting team.

In every uniform team, there are patrol leaders and troops. The patrol leaders could already be the kind of men that the troop members like to follow. When said the leaders have used the process of leadership to reach certain goals, it is like each patrol leader guiding his troop to a high ranking at a camporee. And because leadership is not science, the patrol leader cannot be certain that he will reach his goals. The troop may have a bad weekend during the camporee. But because leadership is about discovery, he would have to try again by different methods. Speaking of responsibility, the patrol leaders have to wear their badges of office proudly. It does not automatically make them a good leader. But it identifies them as a Scout who others want to follow -- if they will let them by showing leadership.

Leadership and Partnership

In recent years, there has been increasingly substantial attention paid to the ‘partnerships’ between leaders and their team members. However, the ideal of ‘leadership as a partnership’ can only be achieved through empowerment and team building. What is necessary for a valid partnership to exist are:

Exchange of purpose
A right to say no
Joint accountability
Absolute honesty

More information on the relationship between leadership and partnership can be found in Stewardship Theory by Davis, Schoorman and Donaldson (1997) and Choosing Stewardship over Self-Interest by Block (1993).

Leadership and Management

Management has been defined as the coordination of human, material, technological and financial resources needed for an organization to reach its goals (Shriberg, et. al. 2002).

Are management and leadership synonymous with each other?

We would not say so despite the many similarities between them. In fact, managers do not differ from leaders based on their personalities or their styles. John P Kotter (1990) wrote that management is more formal and scientific. It is only a role not a type of action.

Managers are often not seen as leaders but as administrators. There are two fundamental organizational tasks:

Devising new directions.
Executing existing ones.

The former requires leadership, the latter management (McCrimmon 2005).

Thus, in short, leaders influence changes in direction while managers motivate performance improvements. Leadership does involve having a vision of what an organization can become (McCrimmon 2005 & Kotter 1990).