Erwin Rausch, writing in this discussion thread, said:
"To understand leadership in organizations, and that is the type of
leadership with which we are concerned, we need a focus, and that focus should be on usefulness. Practically speaking, the only really important reason for finding out what 'leadership' is, or how it relates to 'management' is
to determine what can be done to best help individuals become more
effective leaders.
So, maybe the right question to ask is not 'What is the meaning of
leadership?', but rather 'Why do we want to know what leadership is?'
The best answer would seem to be: To help managers at all organizational levels improve their leadership competencies."
Fred Nichols, in his recent entry, said:
"The most important thing I know about leaders is that they do not set out
to lead; they set out to do something else and other people either sign on
or they don't."
I think we offer education and training in "Leadership" because students or organizational members want to know (or think they should know) how to become effective managers, and have been told that "leadership" is a key component of effectiveness. Although I think it's important to know about how other people have been effective in accomplishing some goal through harnessing the energy and talents of others, each of us finds his or her own inspiration not in other's stories, but in our own commitment to our own specific action or goal. It's that commitment that inspires us to work with extraordinary energy and intensity toward a successful and personally rewarding outcome. If that "vision" of success is sufficiently communicated to others, and they choose to "sign on", then we are leaders.
I'm reminded of Peter Senge's statement, paraphrased, "the natural energy for change comes from painting a picture of what might be that is more important to people than what is." It's this "vision" thing that works. It's not because someone said "we need a Vision Statement", it's because someone had the ability to "paint a picture" of a future outcome that attracted others to want to add their energy to the effort.
And then, IF our effort succeeded, and the outcome is considered "positive", the event might be written up as an example of effective leadership. It didn't start out as a leadership example, it became one because of some extraordinary performance, and the expectation that telling the history of that performance might be a useful lesson.
Maybe we should spend less energy trying to directly teach "leadership" skills and more energy helping people develop useful technical, conceptual and human skills so they can have the ability to conceive of, enact and communicate useful action that ultimately leads to an effective performance outcome.
P.S. I also just saw Charlie Rose interview Jim Collins regarding his book "Good to Great". Collins talks about "Level 5 Leaders" having the courage to stick to something in spite of sometimes overwhelming opposition, and to be committed to action, where the ego is subordinate to the goal. The leadership examples he shares are about people we mostly never heard of; people who "lead" their organizations to outstandingly successful performance,as measured by profit share, market share and stock market performance over
a long time. That's "useful" performance. Just something else to think about...