Why Are There So Many Definitions of Leadership?

During my independent study of leadership over the past 34 years, I have come across many definitions of leadership. If this is a subject you study, or a subject that interests you, I am positive you have had similar findings.

Authors, experts in the field, and top people in their industries, all come forward with their own recipe for leadership. It could be a list of habits, rules, laws, or best practices, all telling you what you need to do to be a great leader, great manager, or perhaps a great boss.

Creators of these lists will swear by them. After all, the tools and techniques they describe have proven themselves successful in their own lives. So why is it that they don't always work for others?

The aim in creating a list of leadership aspects is to highlight another view or simply improve upon an existing list, the way a chef would experiment to improve upon a recipe.

From a desire to improve their effectiveness, people become consumers of these recipes for success. Through hours of trial and error, and years of experimentation, someone may finally hit upon a recipe that works for them. Of course their next logical step is to share the methods in the latest list of techniques for leadership and management, continuing an unending cycle.

However, these new and updated lists add to the confusion because they are often crafted under distinct situations, while merging three different perspectives.

The personality of the creator

Whether people realize it or not, their personality preferences largely influence how they get things done. Personality preferences determine how much they will do themselves and how much help they will get from others. They also determine the way people approach their endeavors in regard to how much planning and how much gathering of resources they perform.

Their job description and job responsibilities

Yes. Specific jobs and job responsibilities will heavily influence a creator's leadership list. Unless they attempt to generalize specific functions, it is possible they will create a definition of leadership that does not translate well to other people's circumstances. Finding that something is important to achieve success in their current endeavor may influence them to emphasize that specific aspect in a more prominent or forceful way than is actually necessary.

How others have defined leadership up to now

Definitions that have already been popularized tend to seep into our new definitions. Things like strength, courage, trust, and confidence are examples. It's not that those things aren't important, but we should strive to know why they are important, in what context to use them, and how to keep them balanced.

A confusion of purpose

The source of the problem with the many definitions of leadership is that the word leadership, along with its counterpart word, management, have become catchall words for the things a person must do to achieve a successful endeavor. By looking at our challenges from the perspective of the endeavor, it becomes possible to differentiate between the specific leadership and management skills that are required to overcome them.

A successful endeavor requires four separate skills, two of leadership and two of management. Leadership skills can be defined as those things that help improve the sharing of vision and the building of relationships. Management skills can be defined as those things that help improve processes and work efficiency.

As long as we can keep those four aspects of a successful endeavor as constants, we can see that the balance or emphasis of each will always fluctuate according to the needs of the time. If you want to improve your chances for success, then find out which of those aspects you tend to gravitate towards, then find and collaborate with others who gravitate towards the remaining aspects.

By looking at challenges from the Endeavor Perspective, we can define our next steps without the biases of personality preference, job responsibilities and descriptions, or popular leadership trends. Rather than relying on the latest leadership fads for our success, we can create solid, actionable plans based on the foundational principles for a successful endeavor.

Until this new view is adopted, however, we will continue to see a confusion of purpose with every new leadership definition that comes our way.