and groups influence the thought and action of others. Leadership scholars have
developed a dizzying array of schools, categories, and taxonomies of leadership
and leadership theories to differentiate various approaches and concepts (Wren
2006). In order to get our bearings for the task, it is worth the effort to sort out
briefly several threads of common and academic usage before providing a more
formal analysis.
In many contexts we refer to leadership as a pattern of influence that resides in
an individual’s or a group’s innovative ideas and creative achievements outside
the bounds of formal institutions. Leadership in this sense can be indirect and
distant, as when we point to the leader of a school of thought, the innovator of a
set of professional practices or to the dominant figure in an artistic or social move-
ment. We readily understand, for instance, the meaning of the claims that Albert
Einstein was a leader in the development of modern physics, or Paul Cézanne
in the evolution of twentieth-century painting, or Martin Luther King, Jr., in
civil rights, though none of them did so by virtue of holding a formal position of
authority. In Leading Minds, Howard Gardner (1995) suggests that this form of
leadership is real but indirect.
As we evoke the motif of leadership in organizations and institutions, and
in many social movements, quite different themes come to light. This form of
leadership is more direct and involving, for it occurs in smaller or larger groups in
which the participants have various roles, responsibilities, and mutual expecta-
tions defined by the collective itself. Perhaps the most familiar use of the termi-
nology of leadership is when it is used to refer to formal positions of authority, as
exemplified by those who hold political office or carry major responsibilities in
a complex organization. These uses of the words “leader” and “leadership” turn
around power and authority and are the stuff of everyday life and language.
Any sketch of common usages would not be complete if it did not acknowl-
edge the traditional belief that leadership is variously defined by the exceptional
attributes of leaders, which we can categorize as skills and personal characteristics.
In this perspective, leaders are special individuals marked by fixed attributes and
abilities, such as high resolve, energy, intelligence, expertise, persuasiveness, and a
forceful or magnetic personality, which is often called charisma. Great leaders are
often depicted as those who turn the pages of history. As the memoirs, biographies,
and studies of business and political leaders attest, many in the contemporary
world continue to believe that leaders possess special qualities and skills, such as
assertiveness, decisiveness, and confidence. In the public mind, they are often
understood to provide a compelling vision that gives purpose and direction to
the groups that they lead. It would be unwise not to reckon with the broad appeal
and continuing influence of this perspective. Although recent scholarship offers a
much more nuanced, penetrating, and contextual understanding of the attributes
of leadership, strong echoes of these traditional ideas can be heard in many of the
contemporary discussions of leadership.
One of the leading scholars in the field, Bernard Bass, uses the word “charisma”
as a way to describe one of the characteristics of those he calls “transformational”
leaders (Bass and Aviolio 1993; Bass and Riggio 2006). He uses the word to refer
The Phenomenon of Leadership 5