Leaders set a direction for the rest of us, they help us see what lies ahead, they help us visualize what we might achieve, they encourage us and inspire us. Without leadership a group of human beings quickly degenerates into argument and conflict, because we see things in different ways and lean toward different solutions. Leadership helps to point us in the same direction and harness our efforts jointly. Leadership is the ability to get other people to do something significant that they might not otherwise do. It’s energizing people toward a goal.
What is leadership? It is a process by which one person influences the thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors of others.True leadership is sometimes hard to distinguish from false leadership, which is merely a form of pretending. Winston Churchill was a real and great leader. But there are also people who wish to appear to be leaders, but aren’t actually. They say that they are leading others, they posture as if they are setting direction and inspiring others. Yet often they are merely pretending. There’s an old saying that the way to become a leader is to find a parade and run to the front of it. We refer to a person “leading” a parade, but walking at the front isn’t really leadership unless the person in front is actually choosing the direction! If the person isn’t choosing the direction, then being at the front of the line is merely a way to pretend to be a leader.
Leadership can be used for good or ill. Hitler seemed to be a leader of the German people, but he set an evil direction. He had great leadership skills, but put them to terrible uses. Sometimes people in business use leadership skills to exploit others. Sometimes people in charitable organizations use leadership skills to benefit themselves rather than the people they are supposed to help. Leadership skills can be perverted to pursue bad ends.