For instance, innovators in knowledge intensive industries are exhibiting a type of leadership that is not associated with the top - down direction of subordinates. Leadership is not all of 1 kind. It is none of these. Rather, all leaders have a drive to differentiate themselves from their peers - whether the individual is a person, a team, a business, a sports club or a nation.
Leaders devise new directions or new ways of doing things, managers execute existing directions.
All organizations have two corresponding tasks - to deliver existing services efficiently and to create new services. Leadership is associated with the latter, management with the former. The one essential characteristic of all leaders is striving to achieve at the highest level and this leads others to want to follow their example. A chief executive might have all the charisma in the world, but without a compelling idea of how to make things better, no leadership can be shown by this individual Alternatively, someone lower down in the organization with a compelling idea but no charisma could lead the organization in a new direction - provided enough opportunists jumped on the bandwagon with little or no persuasion Of course being persuasive often helps a leader get others on board faster, but persuasiveness is not an essential characteristic of leadership simply because it is possible to lead without it. This new perspective on leadership is important because it advocates dispersing leadership throughout organizations rather than monopolizing it at the top.