The Nature of Leadership

Few words evoke as much imagery or provoke as many varied interpretations as leadership does. While we often assign leadership abilities to captains of industry, heads of political or military organizations, and other equally highly visible individuals, in fact leaders emerge in all facets of our daily lives. People serving on school boards or with charity organizations possess the same qualities of leadership as their more well-publicized counterparts. As a topic of research and publishing, leadership is equally popular. It has been estimated that over thirty thousand articles and books have been written on leadership and leader behavior in this century alone (DuBrin 1995). A word search over the Internet, using leadership, generated over 309,000 responses. Clearly, leadership has become a well-used part of our everyday vocabularies.

With all that has been written and discussed about leadership, do we have any sense of an underlying definition of the term? While a number of working definitions of leadership exist, some that illustrate both the nature of leadership and the duties of leaders include the following (Bass 1990):