What is leadership and why it's important

Leadership and Organizational Change

“What leadership is and why its important?”
There are countless definitions for leadership. Some of the most common ideas that authors include in their leadership definitions consist of exerting influence, motivate, inspire, and help others recognize their potential, leading by example, selflessness and making a difference. A pretty simple description isthat leadership is the process by which a person (leader) influences the thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors of others (followers) commit and act towards achieving a common goal.

One of the things leadership is well-known for is that is often perceived as rare, but honestly is one of the most studied and least understood incident, is has more than a few meanings, since it has changed over theyears. Several theories make an appearance to change a bit the definition, some of those theories are: the great man theory, trait theory, behavioral, contingency theories, transactional, transformational, and last the chaos or systems theory. Every single one of them has contributed in the current definition.
It goes from the assumption that “leaders are born not made”, “leaders will arise whenthere is a great need”, “people are born with inherited traits”, to the perspective of “leaders can be made, rather than are born”.
In recent times is more complex than that, the leader's ability to lead is reliant on several situational factors, including the leader's preferred style, if its transactional or transformational, the capabilities and behaviors of followers, etc.

We know there arenumerous perspectives of what a leader is or should be, what makes a good leader? Napoleon Bonaparte once said, "A leader is a dealer in hope." When leaders are chosen, everyone wants them to do everything, live up to their expectations, looking for few or none disappointment. People usually want change and improvement. But what precisely makes them a great leader? There is loads of stuff thatdetermine if a leader will indeed be good or not. To be a good leader you have to have a combination of personality, traits, skills, and certain qualities typical of a leader. It’s more common that those leaders who have born with traits of good leadership are usually the ones who achieve successful leadership.

It’s not a secret that there is not much that can be done to make a good leader; it is,and always will be easier if leadership comes naturally to the person. And most importantly, to make a first-class leader, it is crucial to be passionate towards the job you do, so that the whole team is also passionate and motivated towards the achievement of their goals. 

“Throughout life, we will be called to play many roles. Two of the most important work roles relate to that of leader andmanager”. Said Murray Johannsen. Most people talk as if leadership and management is the same thing. Fundamentally, they are very different. Management skills are a subset of leadership skills. I’ve often heard people try to separate them by saying that they are leaders, but not managers. In my experience, the people who say this normally fail when it comes to attracting followers, this makes ithard to consider them successful leaders.

Management focuses on work. We “manage” activities such as money, time, paperwork, materials, equipment, etc. It concentrates more on planning, organizing, controlling, coordinating, directing, resources, time management, logistics and the SCM, finance, strategy, decision making, problem solving, among others. In the mean time leadership has an importantfocus on people, and how they are influenced. Leaders focal points are the vision, inspiration, persuasion, motivation, interpersonal relationships, teamwork, etc.

Peter F. Drucker once said “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” This quote or saying may exemplify the difference between management and leadership clearly. When you are able to do both, it’s...