Leadership concepts.

Essay by dbodrovCollege, UndergraduateC+, May 2003

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What is leadership?

The questions of leadership skills evoked people interests since the ancient times. However, the systematic, purposeful and wide study of leadership had started only in the times of F. Taylor, who carried out many researches. Nevertheless there are still no strict definition about what leadership is and how it should be studied. The ancient wise man once told: "The art of manipulating people is the most difficult and highest of arts". The truism was correct in all of the times, especially now. The actuality of leadership raises no questions. Every person comes across this in his life, while being the part of society.

One of the definitions states that leadership is a type of managing interaction based on the most effective combinations of different power sources and directed to motivate people to achieve the common goals. From this and the other definitions it can be concluded that leadership is a function of the leader, subordinates and the situation.

The above definitions do not imply that it means the leadership only in the organizational level. It is the interaction and the interference of people in any type of the activity.

Like power, leadership is a potential, which a person has. In the basis of leadership lies a specific type of managing relations, or the leadership type. Those relations are between the leader and the subordinates. The historic leadership type had appeared much earlier than this kind of relations, which emerged only in the period of the industrial revolution.

Starting with the childhood years the following of the leader is perceived by everyone as something natural. It can be the parents in the family, teachers in school, social heroes, with whom the young people try to associate themselves. The presence of the image of a leader in a person's...