Leadership Is Everyone Business

LEADERSHIP IS EVERYONE’S BUSINESS

* What Is Leadership?

The Andes story and the lives of the three leaders we just introduced provide numerous examples of leadership. But just what is leadership? People who do research on leadership actually disagree more than you might think about what leadership really is. Most of this disagreement stems from the fact that leadership is a complex phenomenon involving the leader, the followers, and the situation. Some leadership researchers have focused on the personality, physical traits, or behaviours of the leader; others have studied the relationships between leaders and followers; still others have studied how aspects of the situation affect the ways leaders act. Some have extended the latter viewpoint so far as to suggest there is no such thing as leadership; they argue that organizational successes and failures often get falsely attributed to the leader, but the situation may have a much greater impact on how the organization functions than does any individual, including the leader. Perhaps the best way for you to begin to understand the complexities of leadership is to see some of the ways leadership has been defined. Leadership researchers have defined leadership in many different ways:

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• The process by which an agent induces a subordinate to behave in a desired manner (Bennis, 1959).

• Directing and coordinating the work of group members (Fiedler, 1967).

• An interpersonal relation in which others comply because they want to, not because they have to (Merton, 1969).

• Transforming followers, creating visions of the goals that may be attained, and articulating for the followers the ways to attain those goals (Bass, 1985; Tichy & Devanna, 1986).

• The process of influencing an organized group toward accomplishing its goals (Roach & Behling, 1984).

• Actions that focus resources to create desirable opportunities (Campbell, 1991).

• The leader’s job is to create conditions for the...