 What comes to mind when you think of leadership? For some people they would say well it has to do with charisma. Do you have a leader with charisma? Somebody who is engaging and popular and and somebody who can connect with audiences and really have them feel what they're saying and and where they're trying to go. For other people it has to do with is this person inspirational that they have great ideas and do they are able to to motivate people and inspire people toward great action. For other people it's are they at the top of that organizational hierarchy? But for some that would just indicate a boss not a leader somebody who's not necessarily a great leader but could be the boss nonetheless. So in this video we want to take a look at what it is that makes a leader and some different perspectives on leadership in general. So we're going to start by exploring the foundations of leadership. First of all to define leadership. Leadership is the ability of an individual or group to influence and guide others toward the achievement of a goal. So let's take a look at that in a couple of important ways. First of all leadership has to do with their ability to influence and guide others. So influence and guide not necessarily demand or threaten those types of things but leadership comes from our ability to will will power and and to direct people through influence and guidance. Leadership also has to do with others. It's hard to be a leader if you don't have any followers. If you don't have anybody who's willing to listen to you or to to be guided by you or influenced by you. So leadership is important and it's important to be a leader, but it's also important to have others involved in that process. And finally leadership involves the achievement of a goal. Leaders aren't just guiding people around on a you know walking tour of a city with no purpose in mind. Leaders have and groups with a leader have the achievement of a goal in mind as their primary purpose. Now that we know a little bit about what we mean by leader, let's differentiate that a little bit from manager. So we're going to talk a little bit about the differences between leadership and management. So we can start with the idea that first of all management is an organizational construct. Management by definition has to do with organizational hierarchy and structure. And so it's put into place somebody who's a manager or influences through management is put there by virtue of their place in that organizational hierarchy. Whereas leadership involves a human element. People follow a leader because they want to they believe in that person. People listen to a manager because they're required to based on organizational norms and structures. People follow a leader because of that human element. There's a human connection there. Another difference between management and leadership is that management involves efficiency of process. It involves getting something done in the most efficient way possible. Leadership however involves the development of potential. We're investing in people. We're investing in processes. We're investing in all these ideas because we see the potential there through proper development, right? So it's not about making small tweaks to make things more efficient. It's about the development of the potential in that person or in that process. Management has to do with the present. Management has to do with what are people doing now? What should we be fixing right now? What's happening in the organization right this moment? Leadership though is really about the future. Again, it's about the development of that potential. It's looking forward past this present moment into how is this going to look in the future? What's this person going to be able to accomplish in the future? So leadership has to do with the future as opposed to management, which has to do with right now. Management is also about supervision. It's about making sure that people are doing what they're supposed to be doing when they're supposed to be doing it. Leadership, though, is about casting a vision and getting people to do those things and buy into those things by casting that vision and really not then requiring as much direct supervision under leadership. They may require some management, but under leadership, we're just casting that vision. Leadership is not about supervising people, right? In that moment, it's about pushing people forward into the future through that vision. Now, to be clear, management and leadership oftentimes go hand in hand. The best leaders are also good managers and the most effective managers are oftentimes the best leaders as well, as well, an effective at leadership because as different as they are, they really work hand in hand together in order to accomplish that goal and achieve the goal. Hopefully, we have a little bit better idea of what we mean by leadership now. We're just establishing that foundation and we will continue to have this conversation about leadership through the different types of leadership functions and styles. But in this video, just providing a bit of a foundation on what it means to be a leader and how that differentiates itself from being a manager.