How Would You Define Leadership?

I would define leadership as the ability of any individual, regardless of their status or title, to influence others and achieve a final outcome via team commitment, influence and motivation. Leadership is a highly dynamic and forever changing requirement for all of society in the 21st century and has allowed society as a whole to develop and advance socially and technologically. The concept of leadership and its practice is dependent on a number of different circumstances, environments, teams, values and objectives. As such, leadership can not be restrictive and nor can it remain constant for a sustained period of time. For example, a political leader relies heavily on governance whilst a business leader may be focusing more on strategy and human resource management. Furthermore, leadership pertains to not only the requirements of a specified industry or job title, but the personality traits and individual strengths and requirements of the individual that must lead and achieve an overall outcome for the greater good of an organization or society as a whole.

Throughout my respective management and leadership experiences, I have seen leadership to vary widely, hence supporting my initial statements on its diverse nature. For centuries, academics and well known individuals have attempted to define leadership and essentially establish a structure for teaching others how to lead I believe this to be the wrong way of teaching younger people and children about leadership. Leadership can not be taught or engrained in a student or focus group. Rather, more experienced leaders in society can provide insights into different leadership scenarios and encourage people to incorporate their own traits in defining their own leadership style and how to effectively lead others.

Furthermore, in defining leadership, various leadership styles can be extensively analyzed as they are always present throughout an organization and in different forms. Each individual within an organization has a different leadership style, which vary in their effectiveness in different situations. This is significant as we can learn off the leadership styles of others and determine how certain situations should be encountered and how individuals should be led. Furthermore, leaders can improve their skills by learning off the failures of others. For example, in the corporate world, newly promoted leaders need to learn how to quickly make amends after previous leadership failures and determine how to positively influence others and instill success in their team. In a sense, good leadership is achieved through the use of initiative and individuals trying to find unique ways of achieving an outcome. Subordinates will subsequently respect leaders more if they are willing to exceed all boundaries to achieve a goal, which benefits everyone.

I also believe that leadership should always be related to success and an individual being able to influence others to effect change and achieve an overall outcome. If an individual can not achieve success, than their style needs to be further refined. As discussed earlier, there are a number of mechanism by which leaders can improve their style. The HEC program is one such means by which leaders can theoretically and practically learn how to become more effective and influential.

In conclusion, leadership is primarily based on an individual achieving success through positively influencing others and also developing and advancing further in their respective careers. Future leaders need to learn off the faults of others and be open to change, the use of initiative and listening to their subordinates. It has also been identified in this paper that the beliefs of subordinates also influence the effectiveness of a leader and how they use their team to achieve a task and ultimately, success.