Chapter 1: Different Perspectives of Leadership

Overview

The subject of leadership has been studied for eons. Yet few people, scholars and practitioners alike, have come to any universally accepted definition. Here are some samples:

• "While management works in the system, leadership works on the system." ^[1]

• "...the genius of leadership lies in the manner in which leaders see and act on their own and their followers' values and motivations." ^[2]

• "Leadership is an affair of the heart, not of the head." ^[3]

• "Leadership is the process of persuasion or example by which an individual (or leadership team) induces a group to pursue objectives held by the leadership or shared by the leader and his or her followers." ^[4]

• "Leadership is what gives an organization its vision and its ability to translate that vision into reality." ^[5]

• "Leadership is an art, something to be learned over time, not simply by reading books." ^[6]

• "Leadership is the process of influencing the activities of an individual or a group in efforts toward goal achievement in a given situation." ^[7]

• "Leadership is the privilege to have the responsibility to direct the actions of others..." ^[8]

As these definitions demonstrate , however, there appears to be an overall trend towards emphasizing people relations as having as much importance ” perhaps more ” as production. The following review on leadership thinking and studies provides a similar revelation.

^[1] Stephen R. Covey, A. Roger Merrill, and Rebecca R. Merrill, First Things First , Simon & Schuster, New York, 1994, p. 245.

^[2] James M. Burns, Leadership , Harper & Row, New York, 1979, p. 19.

^[3] James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner, The Leadership Challenge , Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 1987, p. 271.

^[4] John W. Gardner, On Leadership , The Free Press, New York, 1990, p. 1.

^[5] Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus, Leaders , Perennial Library, New York, 1985, p. 20.

^[6] Max De Pree, Leadership Is an Art , Dell, New York, 1989, p. 3.

^[7] Paul Hersey and Kenneth H. Blanchard, Management of Organizational Behavior , Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1982, p. 94.

^[8] Wess Roberts, Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun , Warner Books, New York, 1987, p. xiv.