Leadership is Everyone’s Business

The term leadership is one of the most commonly used words known to man. Perhaps, it is due in part to its nature which is always attributed to well-known people who have inspired changes all throughout history, or maybe because there is something else behind the said word that individuals do not usually notice because it has been undermined by the conventional belief surrounding the term. “The Leadership Challenge” by James M. Kouzes and Barry Posner (2007) posits the real meaning of leadership and those people who can be considered as true leaders in the 13th chapter of the book entitled “Leadership is Everyone’s Business.

Although most of us identify leaders through their position and authority, it has been well thought by Kouzes and Posner (2007) that everybody can be a leader; no matter who you are or what you have. For the most part, many people do not usually notice such view because generally, we are held back by our beliefs that leaders are born and not made.

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Such notion has been well established that only a few tried to escape from the contemporary, thereby depriving people the right to liberate themselves to practice leadership and to assume that anything else is possible. Also read luma reflection paper

What we do not realize is the fact that leadership can be learned. It is not an innate ability that, as many believed, only few people are born with. Like any other skill, leadership can be honed by an individual’s desire to learn, to practice, and to take hints from other people who have learned such skill from their own experience.

As one can notice, effective leaders are those who constantly engage themselves in learning new things. Hence, one should have a personal predisposition that leadership starts from within oneself.

More often than not, the most common leaders are people that are really close to us and not those who are already well known, probably because they are the ones who often extend themselves to us. Without realizing it, we too are becoming leaders for other people, when we create differences that we do not notice for ourselves. At one point in time, though we do not admit it, we have touched other people’s lives. This is so because leadership does not have a face; it is more than what we look like. It is equated to what we do to inspire others by becoming a positive force.

If we learn to accept that leadership lives within each of us, it is only then that we can become the best leader that we can be. In addition to this, we must understand that leaders are not perfect. Just like anybody else, they are subject to commit mistakes. However, despite those mistakes, a true leader knows how to be humble of his actions, for it is only with humility that an individual can learn and understand that leadership is not just a one man action. It requires reinforcement from other individuals who are the ones who can point and correct your mistakes. The opportunity to become a leader is always presented to everyone.

However, being able to recognize such situations is within an individual’s own capabilities. The defining moments of effective leaders can be seen in daily moments. Anyone can make small differences that could greatly impact changes. In addition to this, the recognition of the right moment should be combined with an enthusiastic approach towards the challenges that are faced by the leader and his or her constituents. By doing so, one gives hope to other people and encourages them to find optimism to transcend the difficulties that lie ahead and the potentials that can be gained if the difficulty has been surpassed.