The concept of “leadership” is becoming increasingly important in the corporate world. However, the definition of leadership can vary depending on the author. Generally, a leader is a person with a charismatic personality who has the ability to influence others and is surrounded by strong values, skills, knowledge, and moral values. On the other hand, a follower is a person who follows a leader by choice, by birth, by position, or any other condition.
There are also different definitions of a “manager,” but the management definition of a manager is a person who performs management functions such as analysis, objective setting, strategy and tactics, organizing, leading, and follow-up. As such, a good manager must possess leadership skills/qualities along with other skills.
To differentiate between leadership and leadership qualities, it is necessary to define leadership first. Leadership can be defined as the art and science of influencing others to follow or do a certain job. Followers may follow a leader due to a positional hierarchy or by choice, based on the leader’s desired qualities.
Inspirational leaders naturally or unnaturally influence their followers due to a set of desirable characteristics. These values depend on the natural instinct of the follower. If the positional leader wants to be inspirational, he needs to recognize himself as such. One way to do this is to see whether subordinates discuss their professional problems with him or not. If they do, it means they have accepted him as a leader, and as a leader, he has solutions to their problems.
Being an inspirational leader is important because even if a leader is positional, their subordinates have to follow their instructions. However, if the leader is not developed as an inspirational leader, subordinates may doubt their abilities and follow discipline without their heart. Once they feel that their leader has better qualities, skills, and knowledge, they may follow with passion and try to emulate their leader’s good qualities, ultimately leading to a better organization.
