Leadership
- Leadership Definition
- Leadership Theories
- Leadership And Motivation
- Leadership Tips
- Leadership Books
- Leadership Online Resources
Leadership Definition
Leadership has been defined in many ways as far as I know. Since I started researching on the subject I’ve found at least a dozen definitions, you can can see them all here in Leadership Definitions one of my favorites is this:
“Leadership is a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal”.
– (Peter Northouse, 2004)
You can check all twelve leadership definitions here.
Leadership Theories
As a human subject Leadership has been studied in detail, and most studies date back from the early 1900’s. I’ve tried to condensate the information in a chronological from the early studies until the latest theories.
Leadership Traits Approach
It’s recognized to be the first systematic attemp to study leadership from a scientific point of view.
Leadership Skills Approach
Just like the trait approach the skills approach focused its attention on the leader. But in this case, it was the leader’s skills.
Leadership Style Approach
In this approach the focus is on the leader’s behavior. It is centered on what leaders do and how they act.
Situational Leadership
Developed by Hershey and Blanchard in 1969, the situational approach to leadership is based on the premise that different situations require different kinds of leadership.
Leadership Contingency Theory
Several theories can be referred as contingency theories. A contingency theory is one that tries to match the leader’s style with the context.
Leadership Path Goal Theory
The theory first appeared on the works by Martin Evans (1970) and Robert House (1971).
Leadership’s Leader Member Exchange Theory (LMX)
This theory was first described by Dansereau, Graen, and Haga (1975), with several revisions after that. It’s based on the assumption that a leader has a relationship with all his subordinates, a dyadic (two parts) relationship.
Transformational Leadership
Although it appeared first mentioned by Downton (1973) it wasn’t until James Burns’ mention in his classic “Leadership” (1978) that transformational leadership became better known.
Team Leadership
In the last two decades of the 20th century, leadership in work groups has become one of the most important areas in leadership research.
My Leadership Model
With all the information I’ve read and studied to build up the site, I finally did my own leadership model, I call it The Simple Leadership Model
It’s just my representation of how I see leadership, and how I understand it. I’m sure a lot of you will not agree with it, and I really appreciate that, because I can invite you to build your own models and representations.
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Leadership And Motivation
This 3-part article series deals with Motivation Theories and their impact on leadership. In the two first articles I’ve exposed 7 of the most resounding theories about motivation. In the third article of the series I express my point of view about them and what can you do with all this information.
Leadership And Motivation Theories, Part I
Leadership And Motivation Theories, Part II
Leadership And Motivation Theories, Part III, Final Review
Leadership Tips
5 Ways to See Leadership
5 simple metaphors to explain leadership. None of them is enough to explain it, they are only different points of view of the same coin: Leadership.
Leadership From Where You Are
4 Tips on how to be a leader from where you are in your organization or project.
7 Tips To Lead Under Pressure
These 7 tips will help you to handle your actions and communications during tough times in a positive way, and lead out of them successfully.
4 Keys To Improve Your Leadership
Leadership has to do with yourself and others, communicating and interacting with people. To do so, you should take a look at the 4 keys to Improve Your Leadership.
5 Rules Of Persuasive Presentations
I’m sharing with you the 5 rules of persuasive presentations that Josh Gordon exposes in his book “Presentations That Change Minds”
The Leadership Challenge Video Tips:I have just found this video talking about the Leadership Challenge, check it out!!
The Leader In You:One story, one quote. Strong enough to show how you should lead from within.
4 Tips For A Great Leadership Pitch:4 Tips to Help you give better leadership pitches, adapted from the book of Guy Kawasaki, The Art of The Start.
Are Leaders Musicians?:Leaders should develop certain skills and abilities,in the following post I talk about one that really struck me when I knew about it, leaders should have the “symphonyability”. Read on…
Leadership And Motivation: 10 Ways To Do It:Leadership is about motivating people to do things. Here you’ll find 10 ways to motivate your team. Check it out.
Leaders Know When to Slow Down or to Speed Up:The temptation to slow down or speed up based on what others are doing is real. Great leaders don’t fall in that trap. They use an antidote.
What to look for in Leadership Training?:A good leadership training program should include at least four areas. Presentations Skills, Team Building Skills and Two More. Check them out.
Leadership and The Flip Side Of Learning:The Flip side of Learning is teaching, if leaders are learners, then they should be teachers too. This post is about that, teaching.
Leadership and Self Discipline:All great leaders are self disciplined. Self discipline is like a horse inside us, we all have one, all of us can ride it, but first of all we need to tame it.
Leadership Skill – 4 Tips To Become a Creative Thinker:Every leader needs to be creative, and as such, you need several skills. Today I’m showing 4 Leadership skills that will help you to become a creative thinker.
Leaders are Dummies:Just like you read, I think leaders are dummies, and far from being offensive I have a powerful reason to say so.
Leaders, Followers and The Vision:A True Leader communicates the vision. A good follower asks to know the vision.
Leaders Know and Communicate:Knowing where your company is headed to, and helping others to realize it, those are hallmarks of leaders. Read on…
Leaders Have Mentors:A simple reason why a mentor is important in your life. Whether is a public figure, or someone you know well. Do you have a mentor? I bet you do.
Leaders are Competent:Think for a moment about leaders you admire and you’ll probably find out that they are really COMPETENT at what they do. At least they should, or who would you follow instead? Check this post.
What People look for in Leaders?:More Than 75000 questionnaires around the globe in 25 years helped Kouzes and Posner find the Answer to this question. The top 20 characteristics people look for in a leader.
To Lead Others You Have To Lead Yourself First:Before leading others you have to lead yourself. Every Great Leader does it. Handling your emotions and managing your time are the starting points.
Leadership Skill – Supporting your Leader:John C. Maxwell in his book “The 360° Leader” proposes 6 strategies to face the challenge of dealing with a “not so good boss”.
Leadership Skill – Keeping Score:A good leader knows that keeping score of the important things is the key to success in every area of his/her life. This simple four step method will help you to improve in anything you want.
Leadership Skill – Be Aware of Your Behavior:It’s not easy to improve your behavior, but if you’re committed to become a better leader you can.
Leadership Skill – Reshaping Problems:Reshaping problems helps to solve them easier, faster and in safer ways. Check this out.
Great Leaders of Our Time – Quotes & Video:Inspirational quotes and images from great leaders of our time.
To Lead Learn English, Chinese, or Whatever You Need, but Learn With a Purpose:If you want to lead, strive to learn something useful. My personal experience learning English to write this worldwide reach blog.
Are You Leading Today? 
on’t look around, don’t look elsewhere just LEAD. Don’t wait for the perfect conditions, just lead.
Leadership Skill – Learning Styles’ Strenghts and Weaknesses:Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your preferred learning style can help you to better approach your new learning challenges in the road to become a leader.
Leadership Skill – Identify Your Learning Style id you know there are 4 Learning styles? Do you know which one is yours? Read on and find out.
Motivation Leadership, Business Passion.:I’m pointing you to a single video I’ve found in Google Video, from Patrick Dixon. It’s about business passion, and Leadership Motivation.
Leadership Skill – Learning:The one skill leaders should excel in today’s world is learning. In less than 3 minutes learn about the Cycle of Learning, and how it can work for you.
Leadership Skill – Facing Reality:Facing Reality is one of the fundamental Leadership Skills. In less than 3 minutes you’ll get the idea on how to face reality.
9 Tips to Improve Your Listening Skills:Nine Tips to Improve our listening skills from the Book “What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There”, by Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter.
Leaders and Meetings:Leaders know very well that a meeting is an opportunity to exchange ideas, learn relevant information, but they also know that meetings are the worst time wasters that you can have in a job
Leadership Credibility, Don’t Compromise It:Credibility is the most important asset for leadership. One of the best ways to lose it, is falling into the trap of rumors.
7 Leadership Habits and Practices:Habits, practices, you name it, a leader needs to have certain qualities to be called a real leader. Here I’m sharing with you seven habits and practices. Are you a leader?
Leader’s Checklist For Good Communication:Every Great leader is a Great Communicator also, this checklist can help you to become that kind of leader.
The Skills of Who Moved My Cheese?:To Lead change basically what you should do, is to develop four skills to deal and lead in times of change.
Leadership and Storytelling:Just eight simple steps to tell a story like a pro. Great Leaders are known to be great storytellers. Want to be one?
Bad Habits and Leadership, Punishing the Messenger:Just like talking while angry or not listening, punishing the messenger is a habit you should be away from. This 3 minute tip will tell you how.
Bad Habits and Leadership, Not Listening:In the previous article “Bad Habits and Leadership, Speak When Angry” I’ve commented to you that I picked up 3 out of the 20 “bad habits” identified in the book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter. Those bad habits are the ones that stop you in your [...]
Bad Habits and Leadership, Speak When Angry.:Bad habits stop you in your way to the top of any organization. Whether you’re an experienced leader or a junior executive you have to be aware of your own limitations.
Good Habits to Better Leadership Decisions:Everyday, leaders face tough decisions. Sometimes they have to make them in a rush. I’m sharing with you 4 practices that will help you make better leadership decisions.
Leading Change:Leading Change it’s not easy, but is harder if you have no plan to stick to. John P. Kotter proposed one way back in 1996.
6 Tips To Keep Attention While You Are Presenting.:In his fantastic book “How to Run Seminars & Workshops”, Robert L. Jolles, gives us several tips on Maintaining Interest in a presentation. I’ve pickep up six for you to consider.
5 Uses for Communication in Leadership:Five different “uses” for communication, and five different ways to look at it. These are the uses I’ve found skimming the wonderful “Business Leadership”.
Team Types and Its Lifecycles:This is the last post of a three day series about “Teams” for the 3 minute leadership tips section. In this article you can see four different types of teams and the 5 stages in the lifecycle of the team.
A Team’s Success Factors:A leader has a lot to say when it comes to team’s success. I’m showing the seven factors that the leader has to observe in order to lead to success in a team.
What’s a Successful Team?:Can you recognize a successful team? Sometimes success is not just reaching your goals. A couple of scholars shed some light on the issue.
Achievement and Leadership:Achievement is one of the cornerstones of Leadership. It affects credibility and the way the milestones are set up for the team. In 3 minutes you’ll get the importance of achievement in Leadership.
Communication and Leadership:Communication is like the blood system in our bodies, without it there’s no leadership. Work on your communication skills daily and you’ll see an improvement in your leadership abilities overall.
Credibility and Leadership:Credibility is the foundation of all leadership. To talk about credibility you have to see leadership as a process between the leader and the followers.
The Vision in Leadership:What’s a vision? Why is so important? In just 3 minutes you will learn what’s a vision in leadership.
Keep Your Team Motivated:A great leader knows how to motivate his/her team and most important himself/herself. A true leader knows well how to motivate and inspire people to perform at outstanding levels. As a motivational speaker and renowned author Brian Tracy knows how to do this and gives us 4 simple clues on how to do it.
Experience Learning:Leadership is about learning and improving. Forgetting bad experiences is tempting, but it could be more useful to learn from them. Leadership researchers James Kouzes and Barry Posner, found out that leaders learn from their experiences.
Distinctions Between Leaders and Managers:Warren Bennis and Joan Goldsmith give us 13 distinctions between Leaders and Managers from their Book “Learning to Lead: A workbook on becoming a leader”.
What is it?:Sometimes our perceptions are not enough to totally grasp a situation. A simple exercise can help us to be aware of it.
Tips for a Good Presentation:There’s no doubt that in any leader’s career there are countless opportunities where he/she must expose or sell his/her ideas to followers or stakeholders. Follow These Tips, and you’ll give a great presentation.
Improve Your Listening Skills:Every great leader is a great communicator, and as we know communication is a two-way process. You have time to talk and you also need time to listen. Read the article and Improve Your Listening.
Systems Thinking For Leadership:At the most basic level, every leader should be able to understand the foundations of the organization he/she wants to lead. Systems thinking helps in doing so. Read The Article and Learn More.
Leadership Books
This is the list of the books I recommend about Leadership, I’m not saying this is the ultimate list, but these would be my choices. If I have to choose only one book, I’d go with K&P, The Leadership Challenge. If you consciously read it, it’s the book to go. After that, everything will clear out for you, sort of 
.
Books about Practical Leadership Knowledge
- The Leadership Challenge, 4th Edition
- Learning to Lead: A Workbook on Becoming a Leader
- Leading Change
Books about Historical Leadership
Books about Leadership Theory and Concepts
- Leadership: Theory and Practice
- Leadership in Organizations (6th Edition)
- Leadership: Theory, Application, & Skill Development (with Bind-In InfoTrac® Printed Access Card)
Leadership Online Resources
Here’s a list with all the resources I’ve found useful Probably it’s a little bit dated but would help you in your research.
Leaders are Open To New Ideas:The internet brought us the opportunity to learn from others even though they’re in the other side of the world. Here I talk about a Web site that does that.
14 Leadership Blogs You Should See:This is the list of the TOP 14 leadership blogs taken from www.bestuniversities.com. There’s great information in each one, and I hope they are useful for you.
Great Leaders of Our Time – Quotes & Video:Inspirational quotes and images from great leaders of our time.
Emotional Intelligence Test:Queendom.com “The Land of Tests” has a lot of different assessment tools to let you know yourself better. It’s a great resource, and you should get the most of it.
Change and Leadership, Why We Fail?:Why do we fail to see the need for change? the authors of the book “It Starts with One…” offer examples to explain why individuals and organizations fail.
Articles about Leadership, Coaching, Management, and more.:A good website about management, with an impressive selection of articles on 62 topics.
Patrick Dixon’s GlobalChange.com:Check out this website from “Europe’s Leading Futurist” (Press Association) “Global Change Guru” (Wall Street Journal) “One of the 20 most influential business thinkers alive today” (Thinkers 50 survey–2005)
Academic Leadership The Online Journal:A brief review of a website conceived to share knowledge about academic leadership. You could find good “easter eggs” on this site.
Edward de Bono and Robert Heller presents: ThinkingManagers.Com:Two well known authors have joined to bring us a fresh view on Management, Change Management, Creativity and a lot of subjects a leader has to be aware of.
Change Management Implementation, Inc.:The web site of a company dedicated to help small business to face change and implement new strategies.
Ultimate Use for 360 feedback:What’s the purpose of 360-degree feedback? What are the most powerful ways to use it? In his website Dennis Coates, PhD. Answers these questions in a single article. Check it out.
TodaysLeadership.Com Free Articles:TodaysLeadership.com is a Coaching Company and they have three free articles on their website.
Strategy + Business Magazine:Strategy + Business Magazine published by Booz & Company, a management consulting firm founded in 1914.
The Skills of Who Moved My Cheese?:To Lead change basically what you should do, is to develop four skills to deal and lead in times of change.
Ralph Jacobson, Free Resources:In his site, The Leader’s Toolbox, Jacobson gives useful free information leadership. Worth Seeing.
Ensign 101, Navy Life and Leadership:Leadership is everywhere, this time 46 advices about “Navy life” that will suit most businessmen too.
Leader Values, A Brief Review:A very well crafted site, with extremely interesting information. They’re propelling the 4E model for explaining leadership (Envision, Enable, Empower, Energize)
Inc Magazine’s Leadership Articles:Inc Magazine’s Leadership Articles are a great resource for you to review central topics about leadership like Leading Change, Team Work, and other topics.
Harvard Business Blogs:From the same house that publishes the prestigious Harvard Business Review, we have now access to the ideas and opinions several dozens of experts and “gurus”.
The Leadership Minute, by Leadership Now.:16 Short and easy to read articles, covering a wide range of issues and topics about Leadership.
FastCompany Leadership Columns:Check out this prestigious U.S. publication with a good set of articles written by experts on leadership.
Marshall Goldsmith Free Resources:This renowned author of 22 books, has a superb website with lots of free articles and resources to share. It’s one of the TOP sites with up to date information about leadership.
ChangingMinds.Org: A Huge Repository of Theories and Information:A website conceived to cover almost every possible theory about human development. A mini-encyclopedia of theories.
Free Resources on The Leadership Challenge:The Five Practices model proposed in the “Leadership Challenge” has stood the test of more than 20 years, and it’s backed up with even more years of research. Here’s the link to the free resources on “The Leadership Challenge” website.
BusinessBalls: A Must Know Resource.:A huge site with more information than you could ever need. Alan Chapman is the creator of this interesting concept.
Tom Peters’ Free Stuff:In his website Tom Peters offers us a wide range of free stuff, I really think it’s worth looking at. It will certainly help you to expand your vision.
Exhaustive Theory Index: 12Manage.com:12Manage.Com it’s an exhaustive index of Management, Leadership, Coaching, Financial, and .. you name it theory.
John Maxwell Injoy’s Newsletter Archive:One of the most renowned authors in the field of leadership shares his newsletter archive with us.
Wharton Gives Us High Quality Leadership Information:Just the highest quality information about Leadership from one of the most prestigious Universties in the World.
Website: Leadership Decision Making:A professor from the Merrick School of Business, University of Baltimore has an extensive website dedicated to Decision Making.
Website: The Art and Science of Leadership:A brief review of one of the best (imho) web sites about Leadership in the Webspace.
Leadership
