The scientific study of leadership has made one thing clear: leadership is a complex and mysterious process. The more turbulent the environment becomes, the more elusive the leadership concept seems to be. Otherwise, the academic inquiry of leadership continues to generate as many competing definitions of leadership as there are people who attempt to understand leadership. A brief inventory of scientific inquiry about leadership has found perspectives that see leadership as traits, behaviors, situations, interactions, relationships, networks, substitutes, followers, and unseen forces. Attempting to consider which perspective is correct seems unnecessary because the value in the discussion is in realizing that each perspective presents a different piece of the same dynamic and multi-dimensional puzzle.
In other words, leadership is all of these and more. However, studying leadership will not necessarily translate into understanding or ability; rather than clarifying leadership, scientific study has muddled the simplicity that once existed in common wisdom, and that seems impossible in a turbulent environment.
For example, the disparate perspectives explored in this paper offered three similarities: influence, others, and goals. This suggests a simple definition that integrates commonalities: leadership is influencing others to achieve goals. However, even this simple integrative definition can cause conflict. In a business that must achieve goals to survive, this definition could pass in the boardroom. However, from a social psychology perspective, influence is a reciprocal process that can be unintentional as well as intentional (Aronson, 2008). Further, influence can be positive or negative, meaning that it can influence people toward or away from goals. Besides, conflicts can exist between individual goals, organizational goals, the leader’s goals, and society’s goals.
Some leadership scholars might argue that influencing others toward bad goals in unethical, while others might argue that influencing others to go against personal interests is unethical. In contrast, yet others might argue that influencing others to go against the interests of the group is unethical. These scholars might disagree on which goal is ethical but may all agree that influencing others to take unethical actions does not fit in the definition of leadership, which to them could mean influencing others to do good. Then, some might argue about the meaning of “good.” Others may then argue that limiting understanding of leadership through such a perspective is counter-productive to understanding the processes by which people influence others.
Understanding how leaders use influence for ethical and unethical means can help followers to inoculate themselves against people who use their power to manipulate others against their own interests, to maintain critical thinking under pressure from powerful people and groups, and to make informed choices about how or whether they will follow. This arguing could continue for pages and not be resolved, just as the understanding and definition of leadership are not likely to be clarified by scientific inquiry. In short, even attempting to discuss the areas of commonality among all the definitions introduces conflict because scholars cannot agree on the definitions of common concepts.
Even if scholars were able to agree on a standard definition, and even if someone were to gain full and complete knowledge of what it takes to be an effective leader, the quality of leadership and the ability to lead would not likely change. Research and knowledge do not necessarily translate into experience and ability.