Leadership

Although there are seemingly as many descriptions of leadership as there are men and women who fill leadership roles, most meaningful definitions echo the one commonly ascribed to former U.S. president Harry S. Truman: leadership is the ability to get others to willingly move in a new direction in which they are not naturally inclined to move on their own. While the related but distinct concept of authority has since antiquity been a subject for scholarly analysis, the field of leadership theory and development has emerged more recently. It is primarily an American phenomenon, although its influence has quickly spread across continents.