Yeah Yeah Lead!

Each word in this statement has a lot of meaning, as well as the whole phrase. Through this course, I have learned a lot about leadership, but one very apparent aspect of leadership is that it just doesn’t come from those in leadership positions. Every member of a group, from the highest president or CEO to the lowest dishwasher can be a leader. That leads to one meaning of that phrase, which is that everyone has the potential for leadership and should be concerned with it because of that potential. Let me break it down word by word.

In “Power and Leadership” the sources and reasons why each person can be a leader are highlighted. These are French and Raven’s Sources of Individual Power, which range from “Legitimate Power” which comes from a person actually holding a formal position to “Referent Power” which is gained by being friendly and liked. Just because a person does not hold a position therefore does not mean that they still can’t display leadership, because I think that leadership stems from power. Just think about it, how many times have you done something because a friend has told you to, and they don’t hold any official position of authority in your life.

A leader is nothing without power. Even in forms of leadership such as servant leadership where the leader isn’t seen as one who is striving for power, the leader needs power so that they can achieve their goals. To understand leadership, one needs to understand what power is, and how it can be used effectively.

In the case of leadership, power is the ability to influence others. Being a leader means that others follow you, and having others follow you means that they have been influenced to do so. This brings me to another point about the phrase “leadership is everyone’s business” that I have also always thought from my own experiences. A leader is made by their followers.

The best kind of leader is one who includes their followers and is open to them. That way they can get the whole force of their group behind something, as well as get that ever-sought-after shared vision. A lot of examples were given in “Power and Leadership” of businesses and models where everyone is included and there is a low power dispersion. These tended to be the most successful ones because everyone was committed and felt as if they had a personal hand in the success of the business.

I don’t think I’ve ever been shocked into believing something as much as this point. I have been on my dance team, Genesis, for three years now, and I because the leader of the group in my second year. In my first year the leaders of the group were very intimidating and close minded. Even so we did very well as a team, though there was a lot of discontent with how we were ran. When I became the leader I thought that I would do things the same way, so that we could be just as successful. But, being a subordinate the year before I knew what it was like to be under a strong leader, and my tyrant ways only lasted about three days. I encouraged everyone to pitch ideas and let everyone in on decisions, and next thing we knew we turned into one of the best and most committed teams on the South Asian dance circuit. The success that we had gotten under the first leaders looked like nothing compared to what we had achieved.

It is a weird feeling to measure our success though. Not only did we get trophies but we became a much tighter group of friends, which is the real success that I was looking for. But, no matter what a leader or group considers their goal, success in that goal is what they are trying to achieve. That is why leadership is a business, because like a business they are trying to be as successful as they can be.

Using all of their techniques and leadership skills won’t get a leader to success, though, but combining leadership with “everyone” will. Everyone in the group needs to do their part, because just like a business a group depends on everyone from the leader to the newest, lowest member. This brings me to corruption, which is the ticket to failure. A corrupt leader is only concerned with gaining power for themselves, and loses the group. I’ve never heard of anyone being corrupt and being as great as someone who had been inclusive and group minded.

So that’s it: leadership is everyone’s business. Which I would like to sum up into another sentence: A leader can be everyone, but a leader also needs everyone.