Leadership - Explore, Empower and Excel

Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than what the management says. So the excellence of management gets reflected in leadership. Human beings are born leaders. Every individual is endowed with certain leadership traits and talents. The first trait of a leader is to recognize his own or her own talents and recognize the talents of his followers/subordinates. Leadership is also an organizational function. As an organizational function, it must strive for the achievement of the goals of the organization. Leadership is a capability, a quality and a process by which an executive directs, guides and influences the work of others and stimulates people to strive willingly to attain organizational objectives. All kinds of people can be leaders just as all kinds of people can be led. The second point is that all the work performed by leaders is not management work. A good manager must be an effective leader but an outstanding leader need not be a good manager. People and purpose are the basic aspects of leadership. Hence leadership is leading people with a purpose to achieve a determined goal. The key to effective leadership is human relations. Hence a leader should be conversant with the basic principles, concepts and techniques of human relations. The first step to understand human relations is to understand one's own self. In this article, definition of the term leadership; basic steps required to be performed by the leader; behavioural patterns of a leader; theories of leadership learned from epics; leadership traits, skills and styles have been discussed. Leadership quotes of Peter F Drucker, some of the definitions of leadership, advice on leadership by Bhishma to Pandavas, Colin Powell's 18 leadership principles, profiles of some of the great leader are given in appendix.