LEADERSHIP SERIES: PART 1 THE MEANING AND PURPOSE OF LEADERSHIP by Dr. Adeel Zeerak Whether in the arena of politics or the context of organizational management, we see certain individuals who were admired and followed by many. Such influential personalities are said to have good leadership skills. In the field of politics, we know leaders like Nelson Mandela, George Washington, and Mikhail Gorbachev who had an immense influence over the people and were able to bring about enormous changes in society. Moreover, in the corporate world, we know highly admired leaders like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Jack Ma, who transformed their organizations into immensely successful business entities. Other than planning, organizing, and controlling, leading is considered one of the four foundation pillars of management. Due to its charismatic nature, this pillar of management has not only fascinated organizational managers at all levels but also political personalities who wanted to rule some piece of land as a king, prime minister, or president. Numerous organizational managers today want to become effective leaders to give a boost to their professional careers. Moreover, many organizations all over the world are continuously investing in their employees to transform them into good leaders to enhance their organizational performance. Understanding leadership is not a straightforward task. Numerous management scholars have proposed several theories on leadership that are not always congruent with each other. Therefore, one may find it a bit difficult to understand the leadership phenomenon and to understand what it takes to be an effective leader. Therefore, for the benefit of readers, as a scholar of leadership, I intend to write a series of articles on the topic of leadership for PIM’s Management Outlook magazine. In writing these articles, I will try my best to provide the readers with a comprehensive overview of the topic. This is my first article in the series, which is only introductory. The forthcoming articles will explore the leadership phenomenon in greater detail from various angles. This article series will prove to be extremely useful to anyone who wants to become an effective leader or who wants to have a comprehensive overview of the leadership phenomenon. Whether corporate, political, or religious, some characteristics are common among all forms of leadership. However, my articles will mainly focus on corporate leadership. I intend to use only highly reliable sources of information in writing these articles. Most of the information contained in this article series would be research-based. WHAT IS LEADERSHIP? Leadership is all about influencing others to act in a certain way to achieve certain goals. To have a general idea of the topic, I am reproducing here some of the well-known definitions of leadership. According to Robbins and Mary, “Leadership is the process of influencing a group of people for the achievement of their goals”. According to Kevin Kruse, “Leadership is a process of social influence, which maximizes the efforts of others, towards the achievement of a goal”. Leading, according to Weihrich, H., Cannice, M. V. and Koontz, H. is “Influencing people so that