Daily musings #597 - Saturday, 10 September 2022

Over the last few weeks I was exposed to various definitions of the word “Leadership” and after mulling over these for a while, I came up with my own definition today, and here she goes:

Leadership is an individual’s action that leads to socially-emulated collective co-creative action

Other definitions reviewed:

- Leadership is seeing a possible future and making it happen, from Dr. Kirk D. Fleming, with a slight twist of my own - Dr. Richard Claydon

- Leadership is the art of influencing others and environments directly and indirectly and the skill of creating conditions for sustained organizational success to achieve desired results, from Tom B.

- Leadership is an intended reality phantom created under a collective psychosocial influencing dynamic sublimated into acceptable individual action, from Rui Vale in a slightly cynical mode

- Leadership is influence, from Cliff Berg and the Agile 2 Academy

- Leadership is inspiring people to follow you to your destination while simultaneously enabling you to get there, from Michail Tzouvelekis

- Leadership is practical judgement in always unique social encounters, from Marcus Crow

- Leadership lives in the domain of an observer giving an account, from Jon Jorgensen

And ours, combining Graham Barkus and Dr. Richard Claydon’s attempts at concretising Dr Simon Western's analysis of the phenomenon.

- Leadership is a psychosocial influencing dynamic through which intention is turned into reality through collective action.

- Leadership is the capacity of a human community to shape its future” - Senge thru Geoff Marlow

"Leadership is a socially-constructed process in which an individual is either given or takes increased responsibility or accountability in empowering others to collectively solve problems in alignment with an organization's or team's purpose."

Source: "Leading Teams: Developing as a Leader" -- Elizabeth A. Luckman, Gies College of Business - University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign - through Lou Hayes Jr.

And my own: