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Understanding Leadership History - Nu leadership Series

By: Daryl G.

”Wealth in the new regime flows directly from innovation, not optimization; that is, wealth is not gained by perfecting the known, but by imperfectly seizing the unknown.”

Kevin Kelly

At this time, we shall establish our framework for exploring leadership thought through the ages. Let’s review this concept closer. The practitioners and researchers in leadership have left our society a great contribution. Many of our organizational problems can be solved by reviewing the past history of our society.

For this session, we will bring several concepts together so that we can gain a holistic view of leadership. The Stogdill’s Handbook of Leadership in 1974 listed 4,725 studies of leadership; however, all of this empirical data has not produced a mutual understanding of the term called leadership.

For this article, we define leadership as a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal. Daniel Wren, author of The Evolution of Management Thought, defines management as an activity that performs certain functions to obtain the effective acquisition, allocation, and utilization of resources to accomplish some goal.

Many people feel that leadership and management are the same things. We will challenge your thinking on this matter. The actual study of leadership can be traced back as far as Aristotle while management emerged around the turn of the century.

The concepts share some commonalties such as working with people, establishing goals, and influencing others. There are some significant differences. Peter Drucker, author of Management Challenges of the 21st Century argues, “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”

We assure you there is a relationship. Leaders operate in organizations and often need to lead people as well as manage them. Yes, all leaders are not managers, and all managers are not leaders, but they do share a common root in organizational development. Therefore, we will analyze leadership thought in the confines of organizational behavior. Let us move forward with this thought in mind.

References:

Bass, B. (1999). Bass & stogdill’s handbook of leadership. New York, NY: The Free Press.

Northouse, P. (2004). Leadership theory and practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Wren, D. (1994). The Evolution of Management Thought. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.


© 2007 by Daryl D. Green

To explore the concepts of leadership throughout the ages. Nu Leadership is a column that explores the changing workforce and social environment as it relates to leadership development.

Daryl D. Green has published over 100 articles in the field of decision-making and leadership. Mr. Green is an author of several books, including More Than A Conqueror. He has been noted in USA Today and AP. For one free coaching session ($50 value), you can email him at www.darylgreen.org.

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