Leadership - What is it?

A great deal of work has been done by many authors and researchers in trying to identify and define "leadership". The vast body of research has focused on leadership traits, habits, competencies, behaviors, styles, values, skills and characteristics. Dave Ulrich (Ulrich, D et al, Results Based Leadership, Harvard Business Press, Boston, 1999) categorized much of the research into:

· Who leaders are - values, motives, personal traits
· What leaders know - knowledge, skills and abilities
· What leaders do - behaviors, habits, styles and competencies?

However, when one looks at the vast body of research into leadership, it is mostly concerned with the inputs of leadership and leaders, not the outputs - i.e. What leaders achieve.
A further point that has led to a great deal of confusion around the issue of "leadership" is the definition of leadership itself. Many authors use "leadership" and "management" interchangeably and a great deal of the research into leadership has been with people who are in formal organizational positions (e.g. supervisors, managers, senior executives) - the inference being that leadership is an integral part of the formal management role (Parry, K.W., Leadership Research: Themes, Implications, and a new Leadership Challenge, Leadership Research and Practice, Warriewood 1996).

Let me give my perspective as I understand the differences between the two often interchanged or linked terms

LEADERSHIP Vs MANAGEMENT
Leading:
Leadership occurs at all levels of the organisation. The essence of leadership is concerned with creating the conditions that encourage others to follow. Specifically:
· A shared understanding of the environment
· A shared vision of where we are going
· A shared set of organizational values
· A shared feeling of power

Managing:
While the leadership function is "big picture" the management function has a narrower focus. Leavitt described leadership, as "path finding" while management was path minding". Management is situational and involves:
· Getting things done (task focus)
· Through people (relationship focus)
Best practice in Leadership involves many things, all finely tuned to both the organisation and the environment in which the organisation operates.

Leadership is contextual and is concerned with outputs
The Leadership focuses purely on the four outputs achieved in any particular organizational context by the leader as discussed earlier