There are many different view points on what leadership is, but from my point of view to try to define leadership, you first have to define management. My definition of management is:
Management is the responsibility of a function, department, process or system. It is a position.
Many people think that because they have the positional title of “manager” that by default they are a leader. Not necessarily! My definition of Leadership is as follows:
Leadership is the ability to inspire and motivate people to want to be part of realizing a vision. It is purely about people, and not a process or product. It is character.
On the other hand, there are also people that think that because they don’t have the title of “manager” that they are not leaders. Wow, is that ever incorrect! There are many incredibly good leaders that are not managers. They can have unbelievable impact on other people by inspiring, motivating or coaching them.
A leadership model I have developed and use is shown below:
The model is built on three important dimensions that make and define leadership. First is the Leader them self; second, a clear and articulate Vision; and third, of course People. If any one or more of these is missing or poor, so is the Leadership.
In future posts, I’ll speak to the key points of each of these 3 dimensions of leadership.
Glenn Sommerville 