On the Meaning of Leadership

Article Review 1:

On The Meaning of Leadership

Kaitlin Roe

Austin Peay State University

This article focuses on the importance of leadership by giving many examples from scholarly books and articles that devote sections to this extremely important topic. This gives the reader several different quotes on the definition of leadership in many different approaches, and for the most part makes me realize that there is not one true definition of leadership; it varies with people, situations, and times.  The article addresses what leadership means and settles on one consistent definition for leadership for the purpose of the article that states, “a sociological phenomenon involving the intentional exercise of influence exercised by one person over one or more other individuals, in an effort to guide activities toward the attainment of one mutual goal, a goal that requires interdependent action among members of the group” (Pierce & Newstrom, p. 10). The article also notes that there are several categories from which leadership can arise such as levels of analysis perspective, a stylistic perspective, thematic, and many other different type of leadership categories.

The theoretical assumption that I made from this article is that there are countless definitions for leadership and even more types of leadership, and every leader uses a different type of leadership style that works best for him or her. The book also talks a bout a theory that has to do with managers being viewed as leaders and their employees being viewed as the followers, and then ask, To what extent are managers truly leaders and when are they just simply managers? (Pierce & Newstrom, p.10). I feel that this article implies that great leaders make their followers feel that they accomplished the goal or task at hand without any help, and the leader lets them think just that.  I mad this assumption from the quote from Taoism in our textbook, “A leader is best, When people barely know he [she] exists, Not so good when people obey him [her], Worse when they despise him [her], But of a good leader, who talks little, When his [her] task is done, his aim fulfilled, They will say; We did it ourselves.” (Pierce & Newstrom, p. 7)

The evidence that this article provides to describe the meaning of leadership relies on hundreds of years worth of history. The article uses sources and quotes that date back to the year 1300, when the use of term leadership was first recorded. All of these resources indicate that throughout the years the definition and meaning of the words leader and leadership are forever evolving. There are also many credible resources that are used to describe the different meanings of leadership and the situations that occur to differentiate between these many different types of leadership.  This article refers to “Concepts of Leadership” by Bernard M. Bass to describe 11 different meanings including: leadership as a focus of group processes, leadership as personality and it’s effects, leadership as an act or behavior, leadership as an instrument of goal achievement, leadership as an emerging effect of interaction, leadership as a differentiated role, leadership as the initiation of structure, leadership as the art of inducing compliance, leadership ad the exercise of influence, leadership as a form of persuasion, and leadership as a power relationship (Pierce & Newstrom, p. 8-9). These concepts of leadership are the central concepts of the reading, which are very clearly defined.