Lesson 1º

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What is a leader?

A leader is a person that is capable of influencing others.

He is the reference of a group (be it a sports team, a university course, a theatre group, a department in a company, etc).

He is the person who “voices his opinion” within the group and his opinion is highly valued.

Leadership has nothing to do with the hierarchical position a leader has:

A person can hold a manager’s position and not be the leader and on the contrary, a person can be a group leader without being a manger/boss.

The boss decides what needs to be done in virtue of the authority that his hierarchical position awards him.

A leader, without necessarily having this hierarchical authority, also has the capability to decide how a group acts according to his influence, which is determined by “moral authority” that he exercises on the rest of the team.

Members of the group gain confidence knowing that at the head of the group there is a leader.

A leader is characterized by his skill to drive teams:

Leaders try to get the most out of each team member. They get each team member to work towards a common objective (be it to win a championship, improve the company’s results, win the general election, etc).

Besides this capacity to organize teams, a leader is also characterized by his vision of the future.

A leader is a person that looks at things in the long term, and creates some highly ambitious objectives for the organization and manages to animate his team in trying to reach them.

A leader anticipates change ahead of his competitors.

A person that doesn’t have this vision of the future could be a good organizer, a good co-ordinator, but never an authentic leader.

With the objectives in mind, a leader tries to achieve the best for the company and for everyone of his team members.

He makes his team members identify themselves with the marked goals and makes the goals their own and thus makes them fight for them with great determination.

A person who is only interested in his future welfare could be a leader of an organization. However, he would end up rejecting his position.

Once a leader has his future vision defined, he will fight with authentic passion to achieve the objectives.

The leader represents, for the rest of the group, an authentic example of dedication, enthusiasm and courage.

A person that has a great future vision but that lacks the ability to carry out tasks could be a great link to strategy, but never a leader.

Finally, it is necessary to point out that a leader is not someone who wants to be one, but someone who can be on.

To be a leader you need excellent personal qualities that not everyone has.

Some people are born with these qualities, although you can also acquire them by learning them and through experience.