What does leadership mean to you?

            For me leadership is defined and exemplified to people through the works of Jesus Christ.  Jesus is the purest form of a leader by first being led by God the Father and letting God the Father use him. A leader can either be born a leader with traits or can become a leader through the situations one encounters through life. And Jesus, I believe was born a leader but over time strengthened those qualities. He was willing to be led and willing to serve others.

Being a leader is a mixture of all of the many numerous leadership thoughts and definitions about it. Leadership has aspects of power, influence, and management. And that is why formulating a concrete definition of leadership is so hard. From what I learned in chapter 1, I really agreed with these statements:

“Leaders are not above or better than followers. Leaders and followers must be understood in relation to each other and collectively. They are in the leadership relationship together – and are two sides of the same coin (Northouse, pg 6.).”

“… leadership is a multidirectional influence relationship (Northouse, pg 13)…”

“Leaders and followers work together to create real change (Northouse, pg 13)…”

“They seek to shape ideas instead of responding to them and act to expand the available options to solve long-standing problems. Leaders change the way people think about what is possible (Northouse, pg13).”

The statements above all relate to advice I have been given about my leadership journey. And every time advice is given my leadership style is tweaked because I come to realization that these are important aspects that were not made aware to me before.  Everyone is equal and not one person is above another, leadership is present to aid in the growing of a community or group of people. Everyone has the capability to be a leader. Everyone is needed to get something done, because as Mother Teresa said: “ I can do things you cannot, you can do things I cannot; together we can do great things.”

Those who are born a leader are not necessarily the ideal leader because its like a skill. One needs to enhance is and nurture it so it can reach its greatest potential. Either you use it or lose it.

Leadership is more like empowerment. The empowerment meaning of: to enable to permit. Leadership is there to help an individual realize their true potential. The simplest form of leadership is one person advising another person about how to do something, in other words brainstorming ideas with the other person so that the person has ideas to carry out the objective. Or just one person telling someone to just go for it and do whatever they feel is the right thing to do. An example is being given the task to create a chalkboard sign, a famous quote to illustrate this is: “Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.” This is a quote by George Patton about leadership.

Basically all in all, I think leadership is working together with others, enabling others to realize their true potential as well as my own, and everyone involved is influenced because everyone is learning about how to solve and get through situations because there is always more than one way that will work.