Who is a Leader…Are You One?

By Stanley Tim Ohenhen

Leadership has been severally defined by many people to mean different things.
One thing that seem to be common to most of the definitions is the fact that it
represents the persons in front of all the others, the persons ahead of all the
others and do possess some natural, or acquired, or in some instances, bestowed
advantages that make it easier for them to coerce others to fall in line with th
eir whims and caprices. That way, it really does not matter whether are followi
ng necessarily for the reason of wanting to follow, or willing to follow or beca
use it is the genuinely preferred option to follow, but are following anyhow bec
ause of the fear of the consequences of doing otherwise. For this common thought
, as long as there is someone in front taking the others taking the lead, he is
the leader. This position seems to be the general mindset, so that even in maki
ng efforts to determine the qualities for leadership, one finds himself actually
looking for qualities that will fit this mindset.
The main attempt of this write-up is to put leadership in a more appropriate per
spective. First, let’s explain what leadership is not. Leadership is NOT deter
mined by…:
• Title
• Position
• Age
• Duration
• Inheritance
• Knowledge
• Status
• Gender
• Size
• Education
If one possesses any, or some, or even all of these and that is all there is, th
ey do not necessarily qualify for leadership. In other words one could still ha
ve these and yet will not get the resultant evidences of genuine effective leade
rship.
So what is leadership? Leadership is nothing else but influence, the ability to
, according to Dwight Eisenhower, “get others to do what we want them to do beca
use they want to do it”. Leadership is our ability to COMMAND attention, goodwi
ll, respect, followership, obedience… without FORCE. In other words, leadership
is such that with, or without any of the factors above, one can still demonstra
te leadership and achieve a high level of effectiveness which is, getting people
to willingly and cheerfully follow you and still get results of tremendous succ
ess without you essentially coercing them to do so.
One do not by this position, however suggest the likely impression that
the ten factors above are negative or are not required for leadership effectiven
ess. No. Of course they all offer great advantages to leaders who possess them a
nd will in fact leverage their abilities to optimize their success rate. The emp
hasis however is that people can actually have them without necessarily possessi
ng the capacity to influence others and obtain their goodwill, respect, follower
ship, obedience and attention. Leaders, genuine leaders, will get results, witho
ut coercing their followers, and that also is with, or without any of the ten ad
vantages above.
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