The Highest Ideal of Leadership

The Highest Ideal of Leadership

Leadership is of utmost importance in an organisation. Indeed there is no substitute for it. But leadership cannot be created or promoted. It cannot be taught or learned. Management cannot create leaders; it can only create the conditions under which potential leadership qualities become effective, or it can stifle potential leadership. Leadership requires aptitude. But even without aptitude for leadership there can be good chief engineers or general managers who are rare enough. Leadership also requires basic attitudes which are too difficult to define, and too difficult to change. But practice, though ordinary or dull, may be made whatever a man's aptitudes, personality or attitudes may be. They require no genius— they require only application. And the right practice go a long way toward bringing out, recognizing and using whatever potential for leadership there is in the management group. They should also lay the foundation for the right kind of leadership. "For leadership is not magnetic personality"—that can just as well be demagoguery. It is not* "making friends and influencing people—that is salesmanship. Leadership is the lifting of a man's vision to higher sights, the raising of a man's performance to a higher standard, the building of a man's personality beyond its normal limitations." (P. Drucker). spirit of management best prepares the ground for such leadership day-to-day practices of the organization the spirit  In the management confirms strict principles of conduct and responsibility,  high standards of performance, and respect for the individual and his work