The Meaning of Leadership

We can define leadership as the ability to inspire confidence and support among the people who are needed to achieve organizational goals. Importantly, leadership is not only found among people in high-level positions. Leadership is needed at all levels in an organization and can be practiced to some extent even by a person not assigned to a formal leadership position.

Another way of understanding that leadership can be exercised by many people in the organization is the presence of people who provide leadership to others yet do not have a job title suggesting that they are managers or leaders. You can also rise to leadership when people come to respect your opinion and personal characteristics and are thus influenced by you. Emergent leaders are group members who significantly influence other group members even though they have not been assigned formal authority. You, therefore, can exert some leadership by being an influential coworker.

A team member who is influential based on personal attributes and behaviors will often be regarded as a leader by peers. The ability to lead others effectively is a rare quality. It becomes even rarer at the highest levels in an organization because the complexity of such positions requires a vast range of leadership skills. This is one reason that firms in search of new leadership seek out a select group of brand-name executives with proven track records. It is also why companies now emphasize leadership training and development to create a new supply of leaders throughout the firm.

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