What is the definition of leadership? The dictionary defines it as, “the ability to lead.” That does not give us a good enough definition. An interesting thing that we learned in class last week was that there are multiple definitions of leadership and that each person needs to find a definition that fits them. Everyday leadership is changing and evolving. It seems that every decade according to the events that go on in that decade that definition changes.
Researches have found that leadership begun as early at 2300 B.C. “Written philosophical principles emerged early, “The Egyptian hieroglyphics for leadership (sehemet), leader (sehemu), and the follower (shemsu)“(Bass 50).
J.B. Ciulla in The Nature of Leadership writes, that the definition of leadership is the 1930’s was “The process in which the activities of many are organized to move in a specific direction by one.” It’s important to remember that in the 1930’s the United States of America was going trough the great depression and The New Deal. Then we skip ahead to Cilulla’s definition of leadership in the 1990’s, “Leadership is an influence relationship between leaders and followers who intended real change that reflect their mutual purposes.” Notice the difference between the two definitions. One big difference is the use of the word “one” in the 1930’s compared to the words “leaders” in the 1990’s. In the 1920’s the idea of more then one leader was not possible. Now, there are millions of leaders for different reasons around the United States.
The leaders that come to mind are usual politicians, and famous people that are very charismatic. But reality is that everyone is a leader and will have to use leadership skills in some way, sometime in their life. There are no specific ways to lead, it is taught and applied in many different ways.
A lot of the time we think about leaders as good people who have helped us and done good things for America. What about Hitler? Was he a good leader? Hitler was one of the best leaders in all history. He somehow convinced people that killing millions of people who didn’t look like they did was moral. He was an amazing speaker and an amazing leader. Did he do good things with his amazing leadership skills? No.
I think of myself as a leader. Through out my entire life I have grown and slowly learned how to be a good leader. I have taken on roles including the president of my Spanish class, historian of DECA, and a camp counselor. All of these roles have improves my leadership skills and made me the leader I am today. I hope from my experience in Blue Chip and in this class I can further my skills everyday by learning new strategies of leadership. And just as the definitions of leadership will change in the years to come, so will mine. . I’m not perfect. I’m not famous, and I’m not done learning. But I love leading, being looked up to and making a difference.
-Amie Roden
Bass, Bernard. “Concepts of Leadership: The Beginnings” (1995). The Leader’s Companion. New York: Free Press pp.49-52.
Ciulla, J. B. (2004) Ethics and Leadership effectiveness. In J. Antonakis, A. T. Cianciolo, &R.J. Stenberg (Eds.), The Nature of Leadership. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Puplications, pp 302-312. Part 1.
