Page 107 - SBL Integrated Workbook STUDENT 2018

Effective leadership

The nature and importance of

leadership

1.1 The nature and importance of leadership

 Buchanan and Huczynski define a leader as ‘someone who exercises influence
over other people’.

 Another definition is: Leadership is an interpersonal influence directed toward
the achievement of a goal or goals.

Three important parts of this definition are the terms interpersonal, influence, and
goal:

 Interpersonal – means between persons. Thus, a leader has more than one
person (group) to lead.

 Influence – is the power to affect others.

 Goal – is the end one strives to attain.

Basically, this traditional definition of leadership says that a leader influences more
than one person towards a goal.

Leadership can be viewed from three standpoints

 an attribute or a position, e.g. the managing director

 a characteristic of a person – a natural leader

 a category of behaviour

Leadership is all about moving people and things on, getting them from A to B –
improving performance, changing the way things are done, making a new product –
and if the designated leader cannot communicate the why, how and when of moving
from A to B then he or she will neither behave like a leader, nor succeed in the task.

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