Leading Towards a Better Future

1. Introduction

Scholars and scientists have always struggled to define leadership and its true meaning. With over 350 definitions and countless of studies on leadership, the key to what makes an effective leader has yet to be found. While most studies fail to find common ground, it is widely understood that leadership is a complex phenomenon and should not be taken lightly. In today’s world, this means that true leadership can make the difference between an incredible success and an utter failure. To really understand leadership, one has to look at great leaders in the past, study the modern leaders, and anticipate what future leaders would do. However, large companies are not led by just a single leader but instead rely on several layers of management. The leader inspires his management team, motivates them to work hard, and gives them a vision on which they can lead and manage their own department. This raises the question, what makes these leaders at the top different compared to other managers in their company and more importantly, can these lower level managers eventually step up and lead the company. Furthermore, reflecting back on how business was done in the 20th century, one can identify that the old ways might not work anymore. Leaders have to be able to adapt to a changing environment and create new ways of working which propel their business forward. These obstacles and challenges for leaders raise the question, what makes a leader effective in the 21th century?

The remainder of this paper is structured as follows: Section 2 will cover how leadership differs from management in today’s companies. Section 3 will follow up with the discussion on whether leadership is innate or can be learned. Section 4 focuses on the changes that leadership has been facing over the last decades. Finally, section 5 will conclude this paper’s findings.

2. Leadership & Management, two different worlds intertwined

Discussions arise often on the question...