Leadership & Leaders:
How leadership is understood
depends on one’s frame or focus. Leadership can be divided into two categories:
leadership as a role and leadership as a way of being. (Strozzi-Heckler &
Leider, 2007, p. 15) Bass & Bass (2008, p. 19) suggest further that leadership
is influence beyond what is due to formal procedures, rules, and regulations. Maxwell
(2011, p. 2) expands the point by asserting that leadership is influence in
that if one can increase his or her influence with others, he or she can lead
more effectively.
If the “leader” is put at center in
the frame, he or she is typically seen as special, as having a way of being,
whether he or she is leading others or leading his or her own life,
(Strozzi-Heckler & Leider, 2007, p. 5) and as exhibiting intelligence,
trustworthiness, humaneness, courage, and discipline. (Pockell & Avila,
2007) The leader has a discrete set of personal qualities or traits and the
ability to perform a set of complex tasks, but perhaps more so includes being
bound together with colleagues by common needs, goals, beliefs, and values.
(Pellicer & Deal, 2008, p. 21)
Leadership is much more an art, a
belief, a condition of the heart, than a set of things to do, according to De
Pree. (2004, p. 148) It is about who you are, how you act, what you do, and how
you work with others. (Hackman & Johnson, 2009, p. 34) It is a commitment
to offer one’s purposes, gifts, and talents in service to humankind. (Munroe,
2011, p. 5-6) It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to
serve first, (Frick, Senge, & Spears, 2002, p. 338) and that one wants the
significant intrinsic rewards such as seeing others blossom, knowing that with
its rewards also goes the responsibility to enforce standards of conduct.
(Hughes, Ginnett, & Curphy, 2009, p. 12)