What is your own, personalized definition of leadership?

I think servant leadership…as with Robert Greenleaf’s work is a big part of it…doing away with agendas and moving toward “enabling” others. Leading is…helping.

I’ll echo rlanham’s answer and say that leadership is serving others.

Leadership means never expecting more from subordinates than you are willing to give. Inspiring others to succeed, rather than simply ordering them to do a task. Doing so in a manner that instills confidence and trust, both in themselves and in their leadership. Delegation is a great tool for this.

I once heard that leadership is the ability to get people to do things they don’t want to do. I’d say leadership is the ability to get people to want to do things they don’t want to do.

Leaders are as concerned with the success of their subordinates as they are with their own success.

Leadership does not always come from the top. Leadership at work is when someone takes ownership of the company mission and moves it forward through action, motivation of peers or subordinates. Leadership on life is someone who gets up and does something about what they believe in and is so passionate about it that others take notice and participate. Good leadership from the top is someone who can recognise potential in their team and direct that potential towards fullfilment of the objectives at hand. A good leader can help their staf see their own strengths and encourage them to grow in other areas as well. Everyone wants to feel useful and productive. A good leader helps his or her staff to recognise their value to the project and provides direction in helping them see where they can improve as well.

Leadership is doing and helping others do what needs to be done – whether you feel like doing it or not. In a family, it might be cleaning up the house when nobody feels like doing it. It might be starting the ball rolling by being the first to do a messy task (and thus serving others) but I’ve seen in my life it is often the willingness to do what you know needs to be done without hesitation and without the need to be perfect. A leader can be wrong, they just shouldn’t be lazy.

Lead by example…..

@boffin

I didn’t have time to write a short answer, so I wrote a long answer.

Leadership:
Teaching through example.
Enabling with support.
Permitting failure.
Correcting with tact.
Rewarding success.
Taking no credit.
Not being afraid hire people smarter than you.

Realizing that you got where you got because your leaders practiced the above and let you learn and grow.

Leadership is the ability to inspire and lead people to achieve a common objective. One is no leader if there is no one following him. True leadership is not “forced” i.e leading by virtue of his rank or position in an organization. A good leader has great vision, leads by example and is able to harness the strengths of individuals under him to achieve great things together.

Leadership is the ability to inspire and lead people to achieve a common objective. One is no leader if there is no one following him. True leadership is not “forced” i.e leading by virtue of his rank or position in an organization. A good leader has great vision, leads by example and is able to harness the strengths of individuals under him to achieve great things together.

“One is no leader if there’s no one following him”?
Technically speaking that is kind of obvious.
But I have to disagree. One can be leader even if no one is following, provided that he is causing positive critical thinking towards his/her actions.

I guess being leader comes somehow before having someone that follows you.

Because of my PM background, here’s an interesting article about Leadership and Project Management .