Leadership Definition

Generally leadership and leader skills themselves require a professional knowledge, good practice and often intuition. It truly requires powerful potential from a pile of dull grey rubble. Sometimes the purpose of leadership is instructive, interactive, participative, mentoring, or dictatorial. In all cases, leadership involves influence and power.

When defining leadership power, it is critical to appreciate that the perception of someone as a leader is just as important as the legitimacy of that perception. Once the perception is defined and accepted by the group, its legitimacy becomes mute. But leadership has to be recognized by others in order to be effectively used. The important issues to remember about leadership are that perception is just as important as the position, rank, or office; and effective leadership occurs when everyone knows exactly what is expected, and what the rewards or risks will be. Scientists have developed six power categories which are necessary to be a real leader. They defined coercive power, expert power, information power, legitimate power, referent power and reward power. All of these powers however, would not be useful and effective if a person could not impress people by his potential. Good potential for leader is the ability to not divide and separate but to join without personal exception. In such case people surrounding a leader would come to realize that he would not give them an assignment that he himself was not willing to lead, and therefore because of his willingness to share the risk, his men were able to accomplish their goals with a high level of confidence and professionalism.

So why is leadership important to an organization? Without leadership the organization will lack focus or direction, and without direction there will not be any destination. Therefore, if the organization cannot find out where to go, then any road are open to a real leader.