Leadership Definition

Our leadership definition has the following three characteristics:

First, we do not define leadership within a vacuum, or in abstract – but rather, our definition exists within an organizational context (within a company for example).

For instance, our definition does not apply to great leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr., because the vast majority of his effective influence did not exist within an organizational context – rather, the realm of his leadership existed within the society at large. On the contrary, our definition applies to leaders such as Jack Welch – whose kingdom of influence was within an organizational environment.

Second, our definition has nothing to do with charisma, charm, or magnetism – but rather, with behaviors – with objective, observable, and measurable specific behaviors.

The great majority of world-class high performing organizations are led by so-called not charismatic leaders; charisma helps leaders indeed, there is no question about that – and it also helps any person for that matter – but charisma is not a key factor in driving organizational high performance.

And third, our definition is from practical, hands-on, day-to-day leadership challenges organizational leaders face today.

With these three leadership characteristics as a background, our leadership definition is the following:

“Leadership is the ensemble of specific skills that build a high performance culture with a truly sustainable competitive advantage, because this collection of particular skills – working together – has the greatest possible impact on organizational performance, regardless of the economy, market shifts, or technological breakthroughs.”

Since this page is specially devoted to our leadership definition, we won’t delve further into these skills. However, to find out about what these specific leadership skills are and how they work together, we encourage you to take a look at our Leadership Skills page and at all the links it has on it – a wealth of knowledge about organizational high performance.

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To keep on learning about other useful skills, go back to the previous page, or click here.

To learn more about the skills you need to manage the performance of your direct reports, go to our Management Skills page.

If you would like your executives to explore our leadership definition and how it might apply to your organization through our speaking or consulting services, please click on this link.