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Nowhere in the world of business are you likely to find a more strongly debated yet elusive concept than leadership. The earliest definitions of leadership painted it as a skill that only particular people possessed, a skill that made some people better than others at motivating and stimulating followers.
But over the years, many theories of leadership have emerged – transformational, transactional and charismatic to name but a few. In his book Managerial Leadership (Routledge, 1996), Peter Wright makes the point that the term "leadership" is deceptively easy to use in everyday conversation. Just think of the instances over the last few weeks where you may have said "that person is a great leader" or "he or she showed good leadership in that situation."
However, despite this fact it simply is not possible to provide a single, concrete definition of the term "leadership." A noted author in this field, Bernard Bass, summed this up perfectly when he said that there are almost as many definitions of leadership as there are persons who have attempted to define it!
Wright is willing to concede, though, that a common theme in leadership definitions can be identified. This theme relates to the term "influence." Several definitions centre on the fact that leaders exist to influence the behaviour and feelings of followers.
However, the degree to which personality and other personal characteristics impact on leadership often creates plenty of controversy. Is a leader born? Or does a person learn how to become a leader? This challenging question is sparking some interesting debate. A slight majority of respondents support the latter statement, a view also held by management professor Andrew Kakabadse who stated that "From a survey in which I have been involved, covering 8,000 organizations across 14 countries, the overall finding is that leadership qualities are all learned."
So what are the key areas to learn about when it comes to the subject of leadership? It follows that if leadership qualities, traits and characteristics can all be learned, quality resources in this area are essential.
Articles:
Preferred leadership behaviours: exploratory results from Romania, Germany, and the UK
This article compares preferences of business managers for kinds of explicit leader behaviour from three European countries, and determines similarities and differences, indicating requirements for management practices and expatriate management development and training.
Originally published in the Journal of Management Development
Volume 24 Number 5 2005
Leadership: experience is the best teacher
The authors introduce an experience-based approach offering a comprehensive new way of developing leaders. It knits together on-the-job experience, life experience, and specific skill development, rather than presenting employees with a smorgasbord of classes and programs that is tenuously linked (if it is linked at all) to career development, succession planning, or business objectives.
Originally published in Strategy & Leadership
Volume 33 Number 3 2005
Leadership excellence: Learning from an exploratory study on leadership systems in large multinationals
From an exploratory study of 37 large multinationals, this paper aims to report key findings, derive learnings for the design of corporate leadership systems and identify future research issues for a better understanding of individual leadership in corporate leadership systems.
Originally published in the Journal of European Industrial Training
Volume 29 Number 3 2005
The changing nature of leadership
The paper is designed to discuss how leadership is evolving to meet the demands of a global environment, where teams operate across boundaries; leadership is often at a distance and lacking direct line-management control.
Originally published in Measuring Business Excellence
Volume 9 Number 1 2005
Learning the soft skills of leadership
This article challenges the role of training as a single methodology for the development of personal and interpersonal “soft skills” for leaders.
Originally published in Industrial and Commercial Training
Volume 37 Number 1 2005
Leadership in high-performance teams: a model for superior team performance
This article is particularly relevant to practicing leaders in knowledge industries characterized by transaction and innovation speed, as well as the accompanying change that often follows innovation. Application will also be highly relevant to those leaders who lead highly proficient knowledge workers.
Originally published in Team Performance Management
Volume 11 Number 1/2 2005
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