Scott Adams, Dilbert creator, says leadership is about getting people to do things they know are not in their best interests. WRONG. This is absolutely not what leaders do, at least, not the successful ones I have known in RL (Real Life).
So for Adams and others, here is my attempt at defining what a leader is:
“A leader is a person who chooses from among many alternatives, some of which s/he has generated and some of which either came from inside or perhaps from outside their organization, the right path for his or her tribe* getting buy-in from the whole organization as well as its entire stakeholder group and making sure that all its resources are deployed optimally to achieve their common objectives which serve not only to sustain and augment the interests of its individual tribal members and the organization itself but also a broader, ethical purpose for humankind,” Prof Bruce, Ottawa, Canada July 2011.
(* I am using ‘tribe’ here in the same sense as Dave Logan et al in their 2008 book, Tribal Leadership: http://www.eqjournal.org/?p=1155. To learn more about how leaders are formed, please refer to: http://www.eqjournal.org/?p=1155. Note, I wrote this only to be read by people who are 22 years of age or older…)
I always enjoyed Ken Ogbonnia’s definition:
“Effective leadership is the ability to successfully integrate and maximize available resources within the internal and external environment for the attainment of societal or organizational goals.”