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Everyone says there’s a lack of leadership in the world these days. I think we
should all be thankful, because the only reason for leadership is to convince
people to do things that are either dangerous (like invading another country) or
stupid ([like] working extra hard without extra pay).
Obviously you don’t need any leadership to lead you to, for example, eat a warm
cookie. But you need a lot of leadership to convince you to march through a
desert and shoot strangers. Generally speaking, whenever there is leadership,
there’s lots of hollering and very few warm cookies. Let’s enjoy the lack of lead-
ership while we have it.
Scott Adams, Don’t Step in the Leadership
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OVERVIEW
v In recent times the notion of leadership has increasingly met with cynicism and
become a ‘hot topic’ for debate. Despite a burgeoning but fragmented literature,
there is no agreed paradigm so far for the study and practice of leadership.
v This lack of consensus on what leadership is together with a spate of high-profile
failures due to poor or absent ‘leadership’ have proven to be contributory factors
towards the cynicism that has since developed.
v Yet ‘good’ leadership – that is both effective and moral – has nevertheless been long
recognized as crucial to human achievement and well-being.
v This chapter considers the multiplicity of definitions of leadership and proposes an
integrative and over-arching definition: leadership is showing the way and helping or
inducing others to pursue it.
v Leadership is characterized by six core themes and their associated practices: envi-
sioning a desirable future, promoting a clear purpose or mission, supportive values,
intelligent strategies, and empowering and engaging all those concerned.
v Leadership effectiveness can be evaluated either in terms of behaviour – the extent
to which a leader helps or induces others to pursue a given way and purpose or
mission – or in terms of outcomes – the extent to which a given desired future
becomes a reality as a result of a leader’s behaviour. This means that there are
many different possible measures of leadership according to the nature of the envi-
sioned future, purpose and context in which leadership takes place.
Introduction: The Nature
and Importance of
Leadership
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(Continued)
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