This was a question asked during a course on leadership at the Ontario Fire College. It was given as an overnight assignment. I went back to my room and thought about it for awhile and then came up with the following paper.

EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP

The term "Effective Leader" implies two requirements. First, the person must be a leader. It is not enough to simply possess leadership skills or ability. To be considered a leader a person must actually lead. A leader is someone who influences a group to attain a goal. However, not all people who cause groups to attain goals are leaders. It is possible to force a group to attain a goal through threats, punishment or by eliminating other options. That is not leadership. To lead means to be in front. So to be a leader a person must have people who will follow her. People do not follow negative behavior they move away from it. By using threats or other negative means, a person can drive people but she cannot lead them. Driving people towards a goal is the work of a taskmaster. To lead them she must attract them toward her goal.

To attract people to his goal a leader must make it something of value to them. He must appeal to their needs or desires. They must believe that by following him they will achieve something that has value for themselves. Each person may have an individual reason for following a leader but they all work toward the one goal set out by the leader. To be considered a leader he must have followers. If someone stops working toward the leader's goal that person ceases to be a follower and if everyone stops working toward the goal the leader ceases to be a leader.

The second requirement of an effective leader is to be effective. A leader's effectiveness is determined by two measurements. One being how well the goal is achieved. A leader may achieve goals but an effective leader achieves goals consistently and efficiently. The group is led to the goal by the best course possible and all members share in the achievement. The other measure of effectiveness is how well the followers needs and desires are met. An effective leader ensures that each person gives and gets in the process. Napoleon Bonaparte said that "A leader is a dealer in hope." For a leader to be effective she must deliver on her implied promise to the followers by fulfilling their hopes in return for achieving her goal. If the leader fails to give back to the followers then she is not effective for them.

To consider leadership to be effective it must achieve two goals. An effective leader achieves not only his goal but also ensures his followers achieve their goals. That requires a two-way exchange of information, desires and trust. The followers must know the leader's desire and the leader must know the followers' desires. Once this exchange begins there are numerous methods an effective leader can use to fulfill the implied promise. The method chosen depends upon the situation but it should be as natural as possible.

The most effective leaders are the ones who validate Mao Tse Tung's philosophy of "When the best leader's work is done, the people say we did it ourselves." When people feel they did it themselves, they also feel they did it for themselves. That is the best measure of how well their needs or desires have been met. But truly, an effective leader's work is never done because as a goal is achieved and people's needs and desires are met the leader sets a new goal and inspires new desires. Effective leadership is a lifelong process.

*In this description I have used both the male and female forms of third person singular pronouns of he, she, him and her. I do this because I find the use of he/she to be awkward and unappealing. Some day our language will catch up to our culture and develop a word that is easy to use and is gender neutral. Until that time I am stuck with this awkward arrangement.

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Many years ago when I took my first army leadership course they taught me that management is the science of using men and resources in the most efficient means. They also taught me that leadership is the art of influencing people to achieve a desired goal.

It took me a long time to realize the implications of the idea that leadership is an art. Being a good leader is like being a good artist. It requires a certain amount of natural talent. There are rules or principles of leadership just as there are rules or principles for drawing a picture. I took a drawing class once and it taught me some good techniques. My drawings improved dramatically. The same applies to leadership. You can take leadership classes and they can improve your leadership. However, just as two people in the same art class have differing amounts of talent for drawing, each of us will have a different amount of talent for leadership.

There are some people who seem to be natural leaders just as there are some people who seem to be naturally gifted artists. The thing that they both have in common is practice. A person who shows an aptitude for drawing is usually encouraged to draw often. Their techniques improve through practice. The same applies to a person with leadership ability.

Great leaders, like great artists, are usually the result of natural talent and formal instruction. All of the great artists I have read about have a line in their biography that says they studied art at some school somewhere. The same can be said about great leaders.

Unlike an artist though, a good leader's work is not put on display. Often it is very difficult to see a good leader's work. I think that leadership is like cleaning. I call clean negative work. Although very important, to me cleaning brings things back to the state they should be in. I am somewhat blind to cleaning. I only really see it when it is not done. I call it negative work because it does not create anything; it prevents the creation of messiness. A mess is something I can see.

Leadership, like cleaning, is most noticable by its absence. A living space left uncleaned becomes unhealthy. Likewise a group of people without leadership (including informal leadership) will break down socially. Because a lack of leadership is much easier to notice than leadership itself, many of the lessons of leadership are negative lessons. When asked about leadership many people can produce a whole list of things a leader should not do. These, I think, are learned through personal experience with poor leaders. Many people can point out a good leader but have difficulty in expressing why that person is a good leader. You will get statements that start with "He doesn't ..." and then a laundry list of mistakes made by other leaders. Rarely will you find someone who can articulate the qualities demonstrated by a good leader because when done properly they seem to just flow naturally. Just as a clean room seems right, a group with good leadership seems to function effortlessly. In reality it is the leader (or the cleaner) that creates this condition.