Great Leaders Always Have Key Characteristics in Common

It seems that the topic of leadership has attracted much attention throughout history, but the concept of leadership itself is difficult to define since it can mean different things to different people in different situations. Leadership can be broadly defined as ¡°identifying purpose, establishing direction, gaining commitment, and motivation others toward success¡± (Inkson & Kolb 2002:311). From here we can see that leadership, in essence, is a process. The above difficulty is, at times, also true of the notion of greater leaders. For example, The majority of people usually put Margaret Thatcher, Nelson Mandela, and Bill Gates in the list of great leaders; however, some people may consider Adolf Hitler, often regarded as a bad person, as a great man or a great leader. The reason is that people often look at the question based on their own standings or points of view. In effect, one of the most debated topics in the field is whether or not great leaders always have key chara...