Leadership – What is it exactly?

Everyone talks about leadership, but what exactly is leadership?

Statements provide clues and insights when research is done on this topic, but leadership remains relatively undefined. It appears to be a magical power to some; for others, it’s just a skill that anyone can learn.

Here are a few statements that can be found when someone tries to figure out what leadership is:

Leadership is the process of influencing others to achieve an objective or goal.?

Leadership is also about helping others reach their potential.

Leadership is the art of getting people to do what they don’t want and like.?

The list goes on but doesn’t answer the question of what leadership is. We find explanations, thoughts, and ideals of what a leader should be and then attribute that to leadership. If we go down the path of history to figure out the meaning of the word, it will take us back to around 1821, when it first started showing up.

History states that it was derived from an Old English word “laedere” meaning the one that leads, and was combined with the word “ship” which indicated a position. So leadership was birthed so people could figure out who was the person that everyone needed to follow.

People worldwide are fascinated by what makes a leader, as everyone wants to be a leader, but what exactly is leadership?

An author named James Burns made the most profound statement in his book leadership when he said that leadership is one of the most observed but least understood phenomena in the world.

What is so complicated about this phenomenon that it requires books, articles, lectures, and videos to be created for people??

What is so mysterious about leadership that many leaders and aspiring leaders are trying to figure out? Some believe leaders are born, not made, and others don’t. Is this mystery that complicated that we can’t figure it out, or is the answer that simple that we complicated it?

Leadership is the combination of two words, leader and ship. If you’ve ever been on a boat, you realize very quickly that person who decides what happens on the boat is the captain. From needing to wear a life jacket, where you can be for distributing weight, to where you’re going to go is all decided by one person, the captain. That person assumes responsibility for all the lives aboard the vessel being commanded. If a person is a risk to the safety of the vessel or other passengers, the captain will be the first to offboard that individual.?

The other thing one learns very quickly when aboard a boat is that you do not get to choose where you would like to go, only the captain, and the boat only takes you from point A to point B. The only decision you can make is whether I should get on this boat or not.

Could we have complicated something so simple in our quest to understand leadership?

Could leadership mean someone is a leader of a ship? The captain of an organization.

To truly understand leadership, one must learn to be a captain first.