ABSTRACT
According to former US President Theodore Roosevelt ‘the best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it’ (ibid.: 56), and Lou Holts, a former coach of the Notre Dame football team argued that ‘all winning teams are goal-oriented. Teams like these win consistently because everyone connected with them concentrates on specifi c objectives. They go about their business with blinders on; nothing will distract them from achieving their aims’ (ibid.: 80). Harvard professor and leadership expert Linda Hill (2008) argues that in today’s global, fast changing, multiple stakeholder decision making business environments we may well have to ‘lead from behind’ in order to let others take charge as leaders when it is most needed (p. 127). According to these experienced, but very different leaders and leadership experts, leadership is:
We can use these different components of leadership to construct a leadership defi nition. For the purposes of this book we defi ne leadership as ‘skilfully infl uencing and enabling others towards the attainment of aspirational goals’. We do appreciate that we may not do justice to the many aspects one can argue that need to be incorporated in a complete defi nition of leadership, but as an introduction to the topic in this book the above defi nition will serve its purpose. In the next section of this chapter we will further outline the ways that leadership can be viewed.
