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Leadership is one of the greatest topics of importance within all organizations. An organization’s success is dependent upon the leadership that represents it. Leadership amongst organizations or any substantive of life is a very immense category to capture. Therefore, I want to share with you a very condensed version of leadership through a series of blogs starting with what leadership is and some diverse aspects of it. In the following blogs, topics of the five levels of influence, the leading of people, and leadership styles will be discussed. The information and theories from various entrepreneurs and business leaders shall give you a captivating understanding of leadership.
What is Leadership?
“…In a competitive business environment – which is to say, every business environment – leadership requires commitment, passion, and to be blunt, a lot of time.” - Keith H. Hammonds
Leadership is the issue. It is the next issue, the last issue, and the issue before that. According to James MacGregor Burns it is one of the most observed and least understood phenomena on earth. GaryHeil, Tom Parker, and Rick Tate proclaim that the challenge today is that leadership is thought of in a broad amount of terms. Of course it is about leading people, being inspirational, humanness, and compassionate; but it is also about guiding organizations into the future. Changing organizational structures and systems through persistence and perseverance, a leader must be willing to make the choice to change. With this significant choice, a leader must do so without a guarantee of success.
Moreover, what a leader does best and has achieved past successes by is usually what they have done yesterday. The thing is that what worked yesterday is not necessarily going to work well tomorrow. Making a commitment to changing requires a leader to abandon their traditional roles as goal setters, motivators, and decision makers. They must become architects and builders of a unique kind of organization that embraces a shared vision and shared values – not rules. They must focus on helping people to design processes that can be effectively learned and applied to continuously improving performance. These are just some of the leadership principles that Heil, Parker, and Tate are conveying to us all.
Chris Brady and OrinWoodward state that the term “leadership” is one that can be defined in many ways. Everyone has a general sense of what the term means, but generalizations do not help out very much and can only go so far. In order to understand why to lead, how to lead, and what it means to lead, it is helpful to go to the experts for insight and definitions; but, when all of these are fused together, it creates a very confused message with no real meaning. Brady and Woodard share a quote from The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadershipby John C. Maxwell:
“…leadership is influence – nothing more, nothing less. People have so many misconceptions about leadership. When they hear that someone has an impressive title or an assigned leadership position, they assume that he is a leader. Sometimes that’s true. But titles don’t have much value when it comes to leading. True leadership cannot be awarded, appointed, or assigned. It comes only from influence, and that can’t be mandated. It must be earned.”
If leadership is influence, then what exactly does this mean? It means to influence others in a productive, vision-driven direction, which is done through the example, conviction, and character of the leader, according to Brady and Woodward. Mark Sanborn would agree with this and points out that you do not need a title to be a leader in life. People who strive to make things better are leaders whether they have a title or not. Everyone has the opportunity to lead, and they do so for various reasons. What leaders have in common is passion – passion for the life and what they do; passion to learn and help influence the world around them. This is what real leadership is all about says Sanborn. In fact, influence is such a broad spectrum that Brady and Woodward break it down into five separate levels. These five levels will be discussed in the next blog, so make sure to follow Gumption Entertainment on Facebookand Twitter, and also subscribe to our blog today.
