PRINCIPLES OF LEADERSHIP

Leadership is one of the most important topics that people are interested in since ancient times. Such great personalities as Julius Cesar, Alexander the Great, Adolf Hitler are examples of great leaders in the history, which inspire even now. The ability to govern, influence, lead the others are used by leaders in various spheres of public life: in politics, and economics, at work and in life. The theme of leadership and its essence is interesting for everyone due to the next reasons: it is an important and interesting phenomenon of human relationships, and that leadership touches everyone’s life.

Despite the fact that issues of leadership provoked the interest of people from ancient times, the systematic and extensive study of leadership began not so long ago. Nevertheless, there is still no complete agreement about what is leadership. Researchers define leadership in accordance with their own ideas about it, and assuming that they are most interested in this phenomenon. Leadership has been defined in terms of traits, behaviors, role relationship, administrative position and other.

For me the definition of leadership proposed by Richard & Engle (1986) that “leadership is about articulating visions, embodying values, creating the environment within which things can be accomplished” seems the most accurate. In my opinion it answers the modern vision of leader’s position and function in management of organizations. Also the definition given by House et al. (1999) works very good: “leadership is the ability of an individual to influence, motivate and enable others to contribute the effectiveness and success of the organization”. This definition assumes all the important roles of the effective leader in modern organizations.

Also an important question in the topic of leadership is expression that: “Without followers there are no leaders’. It means that without followers there is no leadership, but without a leader followers represent a certain set of people, as team members must actively interact with each other towards a common goal. Of course, not all employees are followers of a particular person who occupies a leading position, but at the same time, if a part of the group does not consider themselves among the followers, the leader can lose his positions. In any case it is followers who decide the effectiveness of the leadership.

 



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