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Leadership

Leadership

Leadership is one of those characteristics which most people can recognise but, nevertheless, is hard to define. The attempt to define and explain leadership has occupied many minds since at least the 6th Century B.C. The Chinese text from that period, “Tao Te Ching”, contains these words,
Leaders are best when people scarcely know they exist, not so good when people obey and acclaim them and worse when people despise them. Fail to honour people and they fail to honour you. But of good leaders, who talk little, when their work is done, their aim fulfilled, the people will say, “We did this ourselves” (Lao-tse, as cited in The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand, 2007, p. 7).
In the early 21st Century there are a number leadership theories and many more personal experiences of leadership. This essay will evaluate Lao-tse's statement in light of both leadership theory and the writer's personal experience, and will argue that Lao-tse's words, while not the whole story, have stood the test of time.

Bartol, Tein, Matthews, & Martin, 2005, defined leadership as the “process of influencing others to achieve organisational goals” (p. 400). This acknowledged that leadership was an activity which directly involved the influence of other people. Whilst there were different leadership theories, leadership itself could not be carried out in theory: it had to be practiced. In order to influence others' behaviour it was usually necessary for leaders to have power - “some or all six major power types” (French & Raven, and Raven, as cited in Bartol et al., 2005, p. 400). Those power types were: “Legitimate” - where leaders held positions of authority; “Reward” - where leaders had the ability to offer rewards; “Coercive” - where leaders had the ability to punish; “Expert” - where leaders had expertise; “Information” - where leaders controlled information; and “Referent” - where leaders were liked or admired. Whilst these different power types were all...