The Charter Institute Of Public Development

Leadership can mean something different to everyone. To me leadership encompasses many things. Leadership is being able to motivate others to achieve. Leadership is listening to what others have to say and acting on it. Leadership is using interpersonal skills to communicate with others. Leadership is being a good example to others.

What is leadership? Leadership by definition is the ability of an individual or organization to guide other individuals, teams, or organizations. Without leadership many would just follow one another's actions like blind sheep. Many of the powerful shifts in American history were started by men and women who made the decision to guide and instruct one another rather than being a follower.

Leadership can be hard to define and it means different things to different people. To me it means being able to create an inspiring vision of the future and help people achieve that vision. It also means being able to help people acquire that vision either directly or indirectly and help them grow.

There are many definitions of leadership. Chemers (1997) describes it as: "A process of social influence in which one person can enlist the support of others in the accomplishment of a common task or aim"

According to Webster’s Dictionary, leadership is the power or ability to lead other people, the act or instance of leading. I believe that Leadership is an art, the art to get others to follow and accomplish a common goal or task in a harmonic manner. A leader can be shown in all kinds of shapes and forms. To be a great leader many people believe it consists of modeling the way, inspiring a shared vision, enabling others to act, and encouraging the heart. Over the course of me learning how to become a better leader and being in leadership roles, I’ve learned that all these are very necessary to be a great leader.

One of the beautiful things about leadership is that it is all encompassing and fluid. Leadership is defined as “the action of leading a group of people or an organization”, yet that definition doesn’t even come close to actually defining and describing what leadership can mean to a person. Leadership is a complex value, and it took a long time to grasp and apply it to my life. Through my experiences in high school and my church youth group I have come to realize that for me, leadership is the ability to inspire and positively impact the lives around me with quiet examples and actions.

Leadership is defined in many different ways by many different academics and professionals. A few words that resonate with the meaning include management, control, guidance, headship, direction and governance. My basic definition for the word describes it as a technique used to manage and guide individuals or groups of individuals in a specific direction to achieve a common goal. However this is a bit too basic for my liking. While conducting the research for this manifesto I found two definitions that I thought were more interesting and quite charming. Tom Landry defines leadership as “getting someone to do what they don’t want to do, to achieve what they want to achieve” (Murphy, 2010). Alternatively Otto Scharmer stated, “at its core, leadership is about shaping and shifting how individuals and groups attend and subsequently respond to a situation” (Scharmer, 2007).

My personal definition for leadership is a position someone puts themselves in to help society improve, leadership is about setting an example for your fellow peers that is positive and determined to do right. Leadership is also about teamwork, as a leader needs followers and the best leaders are the ones that learn from

Defining leadership is a challenging assignment due to the many elements that leadership encompasses. Leadership is inspiring others to be better. It is recognizing the strengths and weaknesses in not only one’s self but that of others. Understanding that leadership is not perfect and is always evolving.

Although there is no universal definition of leadership, most definitions focus on individual traits and characteristics. Yet leadership remains a difficult concept to characterize. If you were to ask me for my personal definition of leadership, it is simply the ability to motivate and inspire a group of individuals toward a common or shared goal. Lussier (2013) define leadership as “a process of a leader communicating ideas, gaining acceptance of the vision and motivating followers to support and implement the ideas through others.” Merriam-Webster provides an assortment of descriptions for the concept. Leadership is defined as “the office or position of a leader; capacity to lead; or the act or an instance of leading”,

According to Business Dictionary.com, leadership is defined as the individuals who are the leaders in an organization, regarded collectively. It also can be define as the activity of leading a group of people or an organization or the ability to do this. Leadership involves the establishing of a clear vision, sharing the vision with other so that they will follow willingly, providing the needed information, knowledge, and methods to realize the vision and coordinating and balancing the conflicts interests of all members and stakeholders.

Researchers define leadership in terms of personality and physical traits while others define it as behaviors (462). The dictionary meaning of leadership has been defined for decades and will continue to take on new definitions to for ages to come. The term leadership is a compact term that encompasses many factors.

Leadership is a difficult word to define and according to the Miriam-Webster Dictionary leadership is the “office or position of a leader” (Miriam-Webster, 2010). This definition is definitely not one that I would ascribe to when discussing leadership. My definition of leadership is “the ability someone has to motivate and empower others to achieve a goal.” Some may add to this definition, others may discard it altogether and have a completely different definition. In the end, leadership takes on many different forms depending on who is doing the defining and we end up asking ourselves, what is leadership and why do we care?

Taking a deep further look at the definition, we can consider Leadership as ‘the process of influencing an organized group’, engaging them to maximize group effectiveness, ‘towards the accomplishment of a goal’. (Hughes, Ginnet & Curphy 2015, p. 5)

Leadership does not have one universally accepted definition; it is according me an ever-evolving concept. I firmly believe that even though individuals can be groomed and trained to be leaders, however some leaders could motivate and influence individuals around them more effectively/easily then others and direct an organization into a coherent and cohesive way in order to accomplish objectives and targets. This exact school of thought is actually a common thread or an existing element in various theories and