How We Define Leadership: A Collection

We are continuing down the path of investigating, researching and learning more about communities (the definition of them, and the importance of them), and we’ve started to come up against some questions around community leadership.

Considering the requirements of community leadership naturally took us to the stories of others and how they perceive leadership. Rather as we did with the topic of community, we’ve spent time to learn more about the roots of leadership and what the core competencies are of today’s leaders. In doing so we noticed that four distinct themes of leadership emerged from our analysis.

We have collected our favourite leadership quotes together and collated them under the four themes of leadership which we identified during our research. We would love to hear your favourite quotes about leadership and where they fit in with our four themes. Please share them with us in the comments at the end.

Let’s first begin with the dictionary definition of leadership.

Vision & Communication

Leadership begins with a vision of what could be and the ability to communicate that vision to others. Without a vision of where you are going, you cannot begin to build the map to get there. Without the ability to communicate your vision, you cannot involve others to support it.

Leadership is about vision and responsibility, not power. — Seth Berkley

One of the best paradoxes of leadership is a leader’s need to be both stubborn and open-minded. A leader must insist on sticking to the vision and stay on course to the destination. But he must be open-minded during the process. — Simon Sinek

Though they differ widely in personality and style, genuine system leaders have a remarkably similar impact . Over time, their profound commitment to the health of the whole radiates to nurture similar commitment in others. Their ability to see reality through the eyes of people very different from themselves encourages others to be more open as well. They build relationships based on deep listening, and networks of…