Over the last week we’ve been talking about this idea called leadership. We’ve asked ourselves the question, “What is leadership?” In our attempts to answer that question we have gathered together dozens of interpretations of the term leadership using multiple Internet resources.

 

To sum up what all these articles have to say I’d like to share with you an article that Mark Gerzon wrote about leaders and leadership, I have provided an insightful excerpt below or you can read the full article at beyondintractability.org

 

Leadership refers to an extremely wide range of roles that have profound influence on the world. The range is so wide, in fact, that sometimes the term leadership seems to include almost everyone. Indeed, some corporations have adopted the slogan: “Everyone is a leader.”

 

(Leader is) A word, which can refer to any person at any level of an organization, in any field, living or dead, who significantly influences others, for good or ill, is so broad as to be of questionable utility. Consequently, as the patriarch of modern leadership studies, James MacGregor Burns, observes: “Leadership is one of the most observed and least understood phenomena on earth“

 

Not knowing who James Macgregor Jones was, I did some brief research and found out that He is a biographer and writer who specialize in the study of leadership. He has been described above as “the patriarch of modern leadership studies” and is the scholar at the

James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership at the University of Maryland, College Park.

 

If you visit the site above you’ll read the phrase:

 

Leadership is about recognizing opportunities, inspiring action, transforming outcomes and changing and being changed.

 

I found an article by Archie Luper entitled What is Leadership.  I like how Archie writes this article that has information supporting Macgregor’s thoughts on leadership. 

 

“Having examined leadership studies over the past fifty years, Harris Lee learned that there are more than 350 definitions of leadership. This confirms James MacGregor Burn’s conclusion that leadership is “one of the most observed and least understood phenomena on earth.”

Think about this- the information we have been looking at is only a small percentage of how the word leadership is defined.  I mean it is revealed to us in the above excerpt that Harris Lee learned of over 350 definitions of leadership.  There’s more! It would be a huge understatement to say that there are lots of viewpoints and ideas on leadership. To give you a better understanding of what I am talking about, there is a website that reveals to us an unimaginable number of ways leadership is defined. According to leadershipgurus.net there are over 1,983,980 definitions of Leadership and Leadership Qualities on the Internet.

 

We can’t possibly look at everybody’s definition or his or her view on what leadership is. But then again, we don’t have too! Just from the small bit of information we have obtained we have learned one thing- Different people has define leadership differently! Basically everyone has a definition or some idea on what leadership is.

 

Allow me to reiterate what James MacGregor said, “Leadership is one of the most observed and least understood phenomena on earth.”  I like this statement because it sums up what we have been trying to do- define leadership.

 

I’d like to augment James MacGregor’s statement with a definition that I found in a blog called Happiness Is Better, Dustin writes:

 “Leadership is definitely a quality, while tough to define, is a trait that you’ll able to distinguish whether a person has “it” or not.”

 

Now with all this said, is one person’s definition of leadership better than that of another? Who’s to say which definition is the right definition or which one more accurately defines what leadership is? I honestly don’t believe there is a right or wrong way to define leadership.   Everybody views leadership differently and there is nothing wrong with that.   I do believe there is a difference between leadership, management, and authority, but that is another subject.

 

In wrapping up part 4 I ask all my readers, what is your definition of leadership? Please in your own words define the word leadership.  I would love for you to share that information with me and everyone else who reads this blog. 

 

Coming up in part 5 of this series called, “What is leadership?” we’re going further summarize what we have learned so far, take a look at a couple quotations from some famous leadership experts and finally I’m going to provide you with my definition.