Managing Leadership^®

It is often difficult to keep discussions of leadership on track. The term “leader” is a very plastic word that has a wide range of applications. For example, it is routinely used to refer generally, rather than in a technical sense, to those who head enterprises.

That is, anyone who is in charge of anything, from a temporary task force to a major organization, is usually referred to in a generic sense as a leader. This is commonly meant to convey his or her position of responsibility or authority as the head of the group. It does not normally or necessarily point to the more or less technical meaning of a leader as an individual who consciously expects him- or herself to personally exhibit all the leadership functions of an organization.

As we know, various and sundry divisions of the modern leadership movement simultaneously promote a quite wide number of differing, and often mutually irreconcilable, definitions of what a leader is. This phenomenon is, itself, evidence of the fact that such definitions are not generally or intimately associated with the ordinary daily use of the word.

Consequently, it should be noted that it is difficult to get around using the word “leader” in the normal course of a discussion of a senior executive, even when, as I do, one wishes to stress the executive’s role as a manager and not a leader. It is too common, ordinary, and useful a term to be avoided.

The result is recourse to inelegant circumlocutions in an effort to distinguish between the general, broad understanding of the word, and the wide swath of specific technical definitions proposed for it by the modern leadership movement. It bears pointing out, then, that there will be many instances in every-day conversation where an individual is appropriately referred to as a leader in the general sense, without it following therefrom that he or she is assuming (or being assumed to possess) the quasi-technical characteristics of the term that are the causes of concern giving rise both to my book, Managing Leadership (from which the preceding discussion is adapted) and to this site.

In the upcoming discussion of leadership, outlined yesterday, we will be addressing various of the definitions generated by the modern leadership movement. But, as noted, this is a fluid situation, inasmuch as definitions are modified, or even wholly new ones created, whenever additional or conflicting information intrudes.

As we debate any particular characterization of leadership or leaders, then, we will attempt to discipline the contours of the discussion to that type. Your help in that regard will be appreciated – in cooperating, pointing out any discrepancies committed here, and even in proposing leadership models for review.

Thanks for participating! (And, please consider downloading a free copy of the first chapter of Managing Leadership to help establish the context for this upcoming discussion!)

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Today’s tip: Speaking of slippery definitions, how about slippery interpretations of them? For example, did you know that the term “broadsheet” described British newspapers that adopted of the use of larger sheets (so they would need fewer of them) when they became taxed by the page? Please see as well Wally Bock’s window into another intriguing example of this phenomenon at his must-read Three Star Leadership.

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Technorati Tags: leadership, leader, enterprise, task force, organization, responsibility, authority, executive, manager, Wally Bock, Three Star Leadership