The Rethinking of Leadership

Abstract

Leadership has been defined in terms of the leader's actions, skills, and abilities since the early 16th Century when Machiavelli did so. Current and unprecidented global relationships that are founded in cooperation demand a rethinking of the feudal paradigm of leadership that is founded in activities of war. The leadership process may be considered separately from the leader's behavior, and should be if we are to break free of old world thinking. Leadership is defined broadly as a community development process.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the evolutionary development of the concept of transformational leadership by proposing a definition of leadership that is philosophically basic and that addresses only the process of leadership and not the role or behavior of the leader.

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