In some of the groups you have belonged to, you have probably been called on to fill some kind of leadership conference, functioning as a resource person, or being an elected official in the community. Each of these leadership functions varies in the formality of the role and in the amount of authority that the role carries. There is a wide variety of ways for the functions of leadership to be performed.
Many groups have one person who is designated the group leader.
That person takes responsibility for what occurs in group gatherings. This is the most common form of group leadership. An alternative form, however, is for the leadership functions to be spread throughout the whole group and for all members to share in these responsibilities. We use the term to mean a certain kind of role in a group, which is associated with certain values. Everything we say in this manual is written from the perspective that we describe in this first chapter.