Transcript
Okay here we are at lesson two of the New leader 101 our mini-course. The topic for today is, “What is leadership?” In order to answer that question, we’ll talk about why it is important to you to have your own definition of leadership, look at a few definitions themselves, and then introduce a process you can use to formulate your own definition of leadership.
So, you might be thinking “Why do I even need to have a definition. And I will grant you that it is possible to lead without even having thought about it. And I would say that a lot of leaders – perhaps the majority of them – haven’t ever thought about what it means to be a leader. My background, coming from the Air force and Military service, we were trained from the very beginning of our careers to learn about, practice, and appreciate leadership. We had recurring training throughout the years as our careers progressed to deepen and widen our understanding of leadership and what it meant to lead.
I don’t want you to be one of those people that hasn’t given much thought to it because I think it’s really foundational for you and your role as a leader. That said, even though formal leadership research goes back about 150 years and throughout that time it seems like every researcher has felt compelled to come up with their own definition. So there are a lot of good ones out there but there’s no single, silver bullet definition of leadership. This means you’re going to have to hunt around and select one that you like or put one together on your own. I prefer you do that instead of having no definition of leadership at all because understanding what leadership means to you is a foundational part of your approach to leadership.
Let’s look at a few definitions. Like I said there’s hundreds out there, but here are a few to give you an idea.
We always start with the dictionary, right? So looking in the Oxford English dictionary, leadership, the action of leading a group of people or an organization. Meh. Doesn’t really do much for me. I think it captures a couple of things about leadership but I don’t really think it penetrates to the essence.
So let’s look at another one by Dr. Gary Yukl. He’s a leadership researcher who’s been doing this for 40+ years and I really admire his work. I think he really presents this thing called leadership in a very practical and easy to understand way. So, let’s look at his definition: “The process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to be done and how to do it. And the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to accomplish shared objectives.”
There’s a lot packed into this one sentence. Dr. Yukl says leadership is a process, it’s something that happens continuously, requires influence of others. It’s important that you as a leader help those you are influencing understand what needs to be done and also agree to it. It’s not like you’re barking orders from behind a desk here. Leadership requires interaction. Leadership is the process of facilitating those efforts to accomplish those shared objectives. So leadership doesn’t stop just when you get an understanding or agreement of what needs to be done. It continues through people to accomplish those goals. Really nice definition, I like this one.
Coming at it from a little bit different angle, Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner who’ve written an excellent book that I recommend to you called “The Leadership Challenge.” Their definition is “The art of mobilizing others to want to struggle for shared aspirations.” Kouzes and Posner come from a transformational leadership perspective which is about helping people in groups achieve their potential. This struggle that they talk about tells us that is often not easy. So a leader’s job is to inspire that willingness to struggle and then use that inspiration to pull people together. They also say leadership is an art which means that you’re never quite going to do things by a set of formulas as a leader. You’re going to have to use all of the tools in your tool chest to get others to want to struggle amid those shared aspirations and then achieve them. This is a nice definition as well.
And finally, Martin Chemers, another leadership academic who has been in that arena for a while now says this, “A process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task.” With this definition you see some shared elements with the others – process, influence, and getting people to accomplish a task.
So, those bottom three definitions I think are all very good. Yukl and Kouzes and Posner are my two go to definitions when I talk about leadership, but I also think Chemers has a good one as well. There are others out there and I encourage you to go and do your own research and perhaps find one that resonates with you.
Let’s now talk about what leadership is and is not in order to arrive at a definition through this process as well. So leadership is: a process. It happens continuously, you don’t lead once and then you’re done. It involves influencing others as we saw in those definitions. It happens within the context of a group. It’s goal oriented – again, getting from point A to point B, right? Those shared objectives?
It’s not, on the other hand, a set of inborn characteristics or traits. Although there is some research that’s now showing that some people when they are born or more wired for leadership than others. It’s kind of like having the genes to be an Olympic style sprinter or the genes of an average sprinter. The key here is that it takes training, development, willingness, and hard work involved to actually become a great leader. So even if you have average leadership genes if you will, you can still become a very, very good leader.
It’s not a right to which you are entitled. You don’t inherit the right to leadership, generally, unless you’re a member of the British monarchy, right? But here in the United States and most democratic countries that’s not the case. As a general rule, you have to earn the right to lead.
It’s not about possessing power or control over others. Although leadership does involve power, the pursuit of power is part of your core definition of leadership and that to which you aspire to as a leader, I would say that you’re barking up the wrong tree.
It’s not about you or your ego. Let’s go back to the Kouzes and Posner definition – it’s about shared aspirations. Leadership is about something larger than yourself – working for a goal that is larger and bigger than you.
So, with that background, let’s look at adopting or building your own definition of leadership. This is what your homework is going to focus on. So let’s go through a little process and see if we can come up with a definition of leadership that makes sense.
Ask yourself this question “What are the common elements of the various definitions of leadership?” Let’s look at the elements of the three definitions we went over earlier. It’s a process, involves influencing others, happens within the context of a group, is goal oriented and it based on shared goals. Those all make sense. So, using those elements, here’s a working definition of leadership that I came up with: “Leadership is a process that involves influencing the members of a group to achieve shared goals.” Does that work for you? It works for me.
Now this definition might not work for you which is why it’s important for you to go through the exercise on your own so you have your own working definition of leadership that you can use for yourself and share with others. A great benefit of going through the process in this way is that you’ll be able to explain exactly what you mean by your definition of leadership.
Alright, so let’s sum all this up. If you’re a leader, you need to have a good idea of what leadership actually means. Although there’s no agreed upon definition, it’s possible to find commonality between various definitions that are out there. You can also look at what leadership is not in order to understand what leadership actually is. Adopt and build your own definition of leadership. And then having your own definition of leadership is going to help you stay grounded and avoid being bounced around “on the waves of fad or opinion.”
Your definition grounds you, and it’s going to give you a foundation that you can rely on day in and day out. And oh, by the way, it gives you a little bit of a leg up on those leaders around you that have not gone through the process that you will here in a second in order to formulate you own definition of leadership.
Here is the homework. I’d like you to do is answer the following questions: “What are the key elements of leadership?” Which ones resonate most with me?” What’s my definition of leadership?” and “How does your definition stack up with those of leadership experts.” I encourage you to gather as many definitions of leadership as you can. Sort through the commonality between them, figure out what really resonates with you, what really seems to strike home with you. Formulate that definition and then compare and contrast. How does yours hold up?
Now that you’ve got a good start on your definition of leadership, we’ll move on to lesson three which is going to deal with your personal leadership philosophy, another foundational element for you as you move into your role as a new leader.
See you then.