Leadership means different things to different people. Some view it as a quality that belongs only to people of great political or financial power. Many believe it can only be attained by reaching a specific position such as manager or CEO or President or Mayor. There is nothing farther from the reality, and that is what I intend to convey. Of course, much can be gained from studying some CEO's or politicians. But everyone has the capacity to develop leadership qualities. Being a leader doesn’t mean being CEO. In fact, many CEO's aren't leaders at all.

Therefore, if being a leader doesn’t mean having a nominal position of ‘power’, then we have to define what a leader is. In fact, that is the first step to becoming a leader: to define what it is we want to accomplish. We need to know exactly what it is we want to become. In other words, we need to define what a ‘leader’ is so that we can strive to become one. President Harry Truman said something to the effect that a leader is a person who makes others do what they don’t want or don’t like to do. Self-help author Dale Carnegie was fond of saying that a leader gets people to do things because they want to. Leadership expert John Maxwell frequently states that “leadership is influence”. Now, you may agree or disagree with these definitions, but what is important is having a well-thought out, sensible one that we can use and work towards.

For the purpose of this website, I have devised a definition of leadership that I believe underlines the fact that we all have the inner seeds of leadership.Before stating it, though, let me go over a couple of the ones I gave earlier. First of all, I am very much in agreement with Dale Carnegie’s and John Maxwell’s definitions. Carnegie’s conception emphasizes the importance of motivation skills for a leader to be effective. When someone is happy to do something that wasn’t initially in his or her consciousness to do, most probably there lies the hand of a smart motivator. Someone knew how to bring out the desire to do something willingly, and not out of sheer intimidation. For example, people generally vote for a candidate without a gun pointed to their head, so that candidate motivated people to vote for him or her with a willing disposition. Obviously not every candidate that motivates people to vote for him or her is a great leader. But many do have the skill of being motivators.

Maxwell’s definition is simpler, but no less accurate. It is so because of the same reasons Carnegie’s is. It is another way of expressing the same thing. Influence, in my opinion, should be the leader’s guiding thought. How can I influence the thoughts of others? How can I influence the actions of others? How can I make even a tiny dent in the development of other people’s lives? Those questions should always be in a leader’s mind. They become especially important when we discover how much influence we are actually capable of transmitting. Scopes of influence for common people may include our family, school, workplace, and business. So we can see how powerful we can really be in influencing others.

Let’s get to my definition of ‘leadership’. It is definitely not innovative or original. Many characteristics have been left out of it, and because of that, feel free to contribute to the creation of a better definition by commenting on the ‘Comment’ section. I believe it should communicate what a modern leader is, and what all of us should aspire to being:

“Leadership is the ability to influence others in order to achieve a specific goal. A leader is a person who influences the thoughts and actions of others, through the use of persuasion, motivation, creativity, and interactive team- building, in order to achieve a specific goal.”

I recommend taking a couple of minutes to develop your own definition of what leadership is and what being a leader entails. Remember, by doing this you will be defining what you want to become. So give it the attention your future deserves.

Source: www.a1articles.com