Leadership has many meanings. This makes it very confusing. For example, we talk about leading a meeting, a discussion, a league, a golf tournament, a tour and so on.
If we want to understand the meaning of leadership, we need to sort through these confusions. When we talk about leading a tour, we really mean being a tour guide. Similarly when we lead a meeting, we are only being a chairperson or facilitator. But what about leading a league or market? The top player in these domains is a leader in a very real sense.
The Leadership Hierarchy
Most writing about leadership focuses on what it means to be at the top of a group hierarchy, the CEO, President, Chief, King, team leader, Managing Director or ruler. As a result, we tend to overlook other uses of the term. Whatever else we say about leadership, every usage focuses on one person as a central figure. That person moves us to do things we wouldn’t do otherwise. So, can we define leadership as whatever so moves us? Well, no, because then our definition is too all-inclusive. We don’t want to think of salespeople, teachers or our mothers as leaders just because they succeed in persuading us to buy something, do our homework or eat our vegetables.
Why is a teacher, salesperson or our mother not a leader? Because leadership is a group function and a group means having a common purpose. A salesperson does not show us leadership by selling us something because we are not a group. Our relationship is adversarial. Also, there is something about leadership that is not self-interested. Should we really regard a politician as a leader who convinces us to vote for her by offering to lower our taxes? Is buying votes really leadership or salespersonship? We tend to admire the leader who convinces us to do something we wouldn’t otherwise do by appealing to the greater good of the group, as Martin Luther King often did.
The Real Meaning of Leadership
Leadership has always been associated with power, traditionally the power to dominate a group. But, today, this power is fast evaporating. Now, we are more readily moved by the power of ideas, innovations. The awkward fact about good ideas is that no one can monopolize them. This makes leadership more like guerilla warfare, something local, small scale and fluid. The bottom line is that leadership promotes a new direction for a group and it does not have to be associated with an executive position. Anyone with a good idea to champion can show leadership upwards and sideways. Being a leader in this sense has nothing to do with managing a team.
