what is leadership | what is leadership definition

Hello and welcome to Edify Educational Society. Today's lesson where we're trying to answer the question of what is leadership?

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what is leadership definition

Now even for seasoned leaders the question, what is leadership can be a difficult one to answer. So, let's look at some definitions of what a leader is?
Now, according to the Oxford English Dictionary defines a leader as, “a person who rules, guides or inspires others.” But other definitions of leadership as given by leaders themselves, including for example.


This one by Peter Drucker – “The only definition of a leader is someone, who has followers.” Also this one from Richards and Engle – “leadership is about articulating visions embodying values, and creating an environment within which things can be accomplished.” and finally we have this one from Henry Kissinger - “The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.”
Now, there are in fact hundreds, if not thousands of definitions of leadership and leaders. And the fact that there are so many definitions tells us something important. It tells us that leadership is as varied as the many different leaders that exist in the world and what that means is that you will need to find your own unique brand your own unique style of leadership.

Types of leaders

Now if we try to bring to mind who leaders are and what leaders can you think of. Now broadly speaking we tend to think of three types of characters-


the organizational, CEO or the founder
explorer
political leader


So, firstly you have, the organizational, CEO or the founder. And they are kind of beating the odds and any competition to make their company a success. You might think of an explorer and they're forging their way as the first person of the mountains so that others can follow. Or you might think may be of a political leader you know dedicated to pursuing a personal vision of the future.

Leadership skills

So, hopefully, by now you should be getting a feel for just how varied leadership and leadership skills can be. And why it's so hard to define exactly what leadership is or leader is.


So, let's dig a little deeper and look at what a leader actually does. Now in simple terms, a good leader is someone who effectively performs the following three steps. 

Firstly, they create a clear and inspiring vision of the future. Now good leaders provide an evocative and inspiring picture of the future that's going to inspire others to want to achieve that future. Now developing a compelling vision is one of the key leadership skills. And actually, in a business context visions are rarely just curated out of thin air. They usually come about as a result of developing your business strategy.

So, the next step in the process is to engage. And this means motivating people to want to create that future vision. So, to do that you might use something like storytelling and you might also want to create a sense of urgency.


And the final step in the process is to deliver. and that's these leaders they deliver that future vision by taking action and by getting results. So, this is about things like tracking progress solving issues and delivering feedback. Now as leaders use this future engage deliver process. They'll need to use lots of skills and they'll also need to base everything on a solid foundation.

So, the kinds of skills leaders need and there are many more than those listed here are, - they're going to need to motivate their team, coach members of their team, delegate tasks so things get done, they're going to need to give feedback to people so things can get improved over time, you're going to need to use their influence to get people to do things and they're going to need to build a really strong team.


Now in doing all of that and in following this future engage to deliver a process. They're also going to need to have a really strong emotional foundation. Real big resilience and a move you know intelligence. and that's because there's going to be setbacks and roadblocks, that occur along the way towards achieving this vision. And they need to be overcome. And it's going to take lots of resilience and lots of emotional intelligence to be able to adapt as these things happen.

summary

So, in summary, there are many different definitions of leadership, along with many different styles of leadership. And the vast array of leadership skills and tools available out there. Can make leadership seem difficult to understand and therefore difficult to learn.

But there is a simple three-step process. We can use called future engage deliver and that to help us understand broadly the process of leadership. And that can help us stay focused on the right areas. As we manage change or we manage our team. Now alongside this Future engaged deliver process as a leader. You will need to also be consistently working on sharpening your skills and your emotional intelligence.


So that's it. We really hope you enjoyed this lesson. Thanks for reading.

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