The Merriam Webster Online dictionary defines leadership as "capacity to lead" or "the act or an instance of leading." Its definition of leader is, "a person who has commanding authority or influence." To lead is defined as, "to guide on a way especially by going in advance."

An alternative (and somewhat more appealing) definition of leadership is provided by Christopher Kolenda in Leadership: The Warrior's Art: "Leadership is the art of inspiring the spirit and the act of following. The following must be voluntary."

Turning to the psychology literature, in the article "Trait-Based Perspectives of Leadership," Stephen Zaccaro, citing Jacobs and Jaques (1991) and Zaccaro (2001), provides the following interpretation of leadership and more specifically effective leadership: 

“Successful and effective leadership means, fundamentally, influencing others by establishing a direction for collective effort and managing, shaping, and developing the collective activities in accordance with this direction.”

In "The Role of the Situation in Leadership," Victor Vroom and Arthur Jago share their definition:

“We see leadership as a process of motivating people to work together collaboratively to accomplish great things. Note a few implications of this definition:

1. Leadership is a process, not a property of a person.
2. The process involves a particular form of influence called motivating.
3. The nature of the incentives, extrinsic or intrinsic, is not part of the definition.
4. The consequence of the influence is collaboration in pursuit of a common goal.
5. The “great things” are in the minds of both leader and followers and are not necessarily viewed as desirable by all parties.”

As the reader may have observed, there are as many definitions of leadership as there are people interested in the subject. Interestingly, while a precise and universal definition of leadership eludes us, we can easily come up with a detailed and widely accepted description of bad leadership.

While it's unlikely everyone will agree on a single, elegant definition. What is certain is that

"the subject [leadership] is vast, amorphous, slippery, and, above all, desperately important."

(source: Warren Bennis in the Introduction to the American Psychologist Special Issue on Leadership, January 2007).

The importance of leadership, of course, is not a revelation, and our literature reflects an onging and overwhelming fascination with the topic. Leadership has been and continues to be the subject of numerous volumes in academic and practitioner literature. A quick search on the word "leadership" yields thousands of books, conferences, and specialty web sites. One can't pick up a morning paper without headlines screaming about poor leadership, and one cannot walk through a bookstore without tripping over volumes proclaiming the 9, 12, or 21 essential leadership traits or characteristics. In recent years, high profile failures of leadership in all spheres (including, among other, business, politics, religion), have also brought greater attention to the importance of Ethical Leadership.

While our literature is chock full of volumes detailing and explaining leadership, leadership remains a difficult task. Nevertheless it is relevant everywhere, and engages us all. (Some examples of leadership). For these reasons we owe it to ourselves, our planet, and future generations to study and improve our leadership development.

As can be seen in this site, leadership is associated with a variety of functions and competencies (desirable leadership attributes). An argument can be made that one function is more crucial than all others: decision making. Thus, while we explore various aspects of leadership development herein, we pay special attention to the study of decision making.

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