Last Week's Leadership Definition:
Leadership is something that someone has inside of them that they can choose to use or not use, OR it can exist without their awareness, that can be good or bad. It depends on the situation and it motivates and inspires other people to do or not do things. People don't try to be a leader all of the time because sometimes just having followers makes a leader.
New Leadership Definition:
Leadership involves being able to step outside of the situation and look at the big picture. In life, a million things are all happening at once that affect a million more things, and there is a lot that is outside of our control. Someone who is acting as a leader in a situation realizes this and does their best to assess every situation from many viewpoints, especially that of their followers. It's important to do this because we need to remove ourselves (and along with that our emotional connection to anything in the situation) to see it for what it really is. Sometime our own world view clouds our perception of what is going on, so we need to be able to "get on the balcony". I've also learned that there are many different ways in which we can be a leader, both good and bad. Some focus more on relationships and some focus more on results. They all have their good and bad qualities but according to Coleman, Boyatzis, and McKee, being a visionary leader can't really be a bad thing.
Analysis:
I still think that my general definition from last week is still what I regard the definition to be, and what I wrote from this week is more of a detailed explanation of what I feel the first definition means. I think I'm going to include last week's in next week's too.
Bibliography:
Heifetz, R. A., & Linsky, M. (2002) "Get on the balcony." Leadership on the Line: Staying alive through the dangers of leading (pp. 51 - 74). Boston: Harvard Business School Press
Coleman, D., Boyatzis, R., & McKee, A. (2002). "The leadership repertoire." Primal leadership. Learning to lead with emotional intelligence (p. 53 - 69) Boston: Harvard Business School Press
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