Whereas sometimes one can readily and definitively identify the locus of leadership, in other circumstances the situation remains obscured.
Bureaucratic organizations can also raise incompetent people to levels of leadership, (per the Peter Principle).
Leadership does not have to be permanent, but can change hands through rotation, elections, or other mechanisms.
Leadership can refer to simply governing oneself, or to government of the whole earth.
Leadership is the ability to lead or someone who is the head of a group of people.
Some high schools and colleges have leadership programs in which students are exposed to different programs on their campus with the idea that they will eventually assume a position of leadership in them.
George Terry has defined leadership as: "The activity of influencing people to strive willingly for group objectives."
Triumvirates have long served to balance leadership ambitions—notably in Rome in the first century B.C.E., but also as recently as in the Soviet Union troikas of the twentieth century.
The core group provides leadership in working out the details of the piece, and presents their ideas to the whole team.
Good societies, however, are rarely extant without effective leadership.
Conscious leadership includes conscious discernment, a principle that demands performance, integrity, competence and a noncalloused form of spiritual toughness.
The Middle Ages saw leadership divided between the secular and spiritual realms - between Emperor and Pope.
Despite the fact that leadership positions are generally seen as glamorous and desirable, the job can in fact be mundane, tedious, or downright exhausting, which is an alternative view to the standardly accepted one.
Many would argue that leadership is an innate quality that cannot be learned.
Ronald Heifetz described the difference between a descriptive view and a prescriptive view of leadership.
Leadership can have many variations other than the types listed above.
Most modern business organizations (and some government departments) encourage what they see as "leadership skills" and reward identified potential leaders with promotions.
A descriptive view describes leadership and how it occurs, and a prescriptive view suggests how it should occur.
Despite this argument, there exist a number of avenues by which people receive leadership training.
A team structure can involve sharing power equally on all issues, but more commonly uses "rotating leadership."
James Farr argued not for any one "correct leadership style" but for the style that each situation requires.
Many, using a different definition of leadership, would claim that it does not classify as leadership at all—simply because no deliberate intention to lead exists.
Understanding leadership has been the source of much research and theorizing.
Unconscious "leading by example" (as the phrase has it) may nevertheless exemplify such "leadership."
Sociologist Max Weber wrote of three forms of leadership: Charismatic, traditional, and legal/rational.
James MacGregor Burns wrote that a study of the definition of the word, "leadership" revealed 130 definitions.
Effective leadership does not necessarily mean the leader is good and the results benefit society, as evidenced by Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler.
Shorter, but still formal, programs include leadership trainings offered by motivational speakers.
Pre-modern Japan offers a classical example: The emperors provided symbolic and religious leadership, but the shoguns embodied virtually all political and administrative leadership.
Others may see the traditional leadership of a boss as costing too much in team performance.
Studies of leadership have suggested qualities that people often associate with leadership.