Leadership the Word \'Leadership\' Means

Leadership

The word 'leadership' means different things to different people, but it is reasonable that most definitions would incorporate an element of influencing a process by which superior performance is facilitated by a collective group (Yukl, 2002).

Over the years, my perception of leadership has changed -- it has become more coherent. At one point, I viewed leadership as being a vague concept, something that you know when you see. However, over the years this concept has coalesced into a relatively clear vision of what leadership entails. Leadership to me now entails a combination of vision and motivation wherein an organization can achieve its full potential. My personal definition of leadership today is organizing and motivating a group of people to achieve a task in a manner that meets or exceeds what would be achieved without the leadership. In other words, the group will inherently operate at a given level; leadership is the additional organization and motivation that takes the group beyond that level.

In my experience, the best leaders I have come across share a handful of key traits. They tend to have great vision, and see things that others in the organization do not see immediately. In addition, the best leaders have a degree of patience that few others possess. These leaders are able to have this patience because they have a vision for the future and a plan to achieve that vision -- they are not concerned with short-term problems because they understand the relevance of everything in the long-term context.

These leaders had many strengths. The first was that they were all intelligent, thoughtful people. All of the good leaders I have encountered have been able to filter through vast amounts of information to find the most important elements, and use them to build their strategies. Another key strength of the best leaders I have encountered has been charisma. Leaders inherently need that special something that separates them from other equally competent people. The charisma that true leaders possess allows them to organize and motivate others around them, which is ultimately the most important aspect of a leader.

I have learned a lot about leadership from being around these great leaders. I have first learned much about my own leadership abilities. I have been able to compare the great leaders I have worked with to myself and learn about my own strengths and weaknesses as a result. I believe that I possess most of the hard skills that a leader needs, such as patience and intelligence, but I have learned a lot about the soft skills as well. The leaders to whom I have been exposed have taught me much about the subtler aspects of communication, in particular when dealing with difficult people or situations.