What makes a leader? What characteristics do good leaders all have in common? Where do they differ? Does the task make the leader or does the leader make the task?
In short, what is leadership?
The great leaders of history come from every/ordinary walk of life; what unites them is their ability to inspire others to achieve beyond what is expected.
When you look at leaders in the business world, the same characteristics hold true.
There is not one career path to make a leader, but all good leaders share the desire to develop ‘their business and their people’—they know that both are essential to their effectiveness and their business results.
The earlier view of leadership focused on birth of leaders, ‘leaders are born, not made’ was the dictum. Leadership in the past focussed on personality of a leader, often accompanies by birth and charisma.
As times evolved and researches deepened, one thing eventually became clear. The idea of leaders being born was refuted upon.
Studies today prove that leaders evolve with time. That evolution is a process and the response, an individual makes by responding to impending time.
“Leadership is way of seeing things that others cannot and an art of making right choices for oneself and for others, in the way of developing and empowering people towards a life of excellence in the world”
This comes from three main traits, ‘education, exposure, experience’. It cannot be one with out the other.
To a large extent, our history has proved, that is not take so much of physical valour, but a strong mental and emotional valour that truly determines someone’s leaderships ability.
As rightly pointed out by Daniel Goleman’s work on emotional intelligence, which stressed the importance of awareness of self and others and relationship skills as key components of leadership
The good news is that today true grit of leadership can be assessed, monitored and evaluated. Thanks to Corporate Leadership model. With its advent, Leadership has become a science and study. No form of leadership is left without scrutiny.
Leaders evolve with time and that leadership is contextual. it is often a response and an outcome to a compelling need of the society and time.
Elias Moses, ManagingNext