The field of business management has created an ocean of concepts , jargons and buzz words. Most often the terms such as leadership, business, product, team, group etc invoke different perceptions among different set of people. Even the educated elite bicker with their contemporaries about the preciseness of the term's meanings and definitions. Leadership is an apt example. What leadership meant in 1950s is different from that of the 2000s.
1.
1. Leadership is “ the behaviour of an individual … directing the activities of a group toward a shared goal” (Hemphill & Coons ,1957)
2. Leadership is the process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to be done and how it can be done effectively, and the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to accomplish the shared objectives. (Yukl, 2002)
Which definition is best or better? We can argue for a decade and still not reach an agreement.
Concepts such as leadership, business, customer, product, value etc are 'live' and not rigid like dead wood. Such terms have the atrribute to assume contextual meaning. The experience from our workshops make us feel that, we should not waste our time being adamant on the preciseness of the definition, but to allow the beholder to hold the meaning as it is and nourish the meaning to grow as the contexts change. Only the beholder's definition matters most in the field than the academically nailed definitions. We need not force a Consultant's / Business school's definition on to the person-on-toes in the sphere of business. The experiences will enable the beholder naturally change the perspective and we need only to facilitate that transition.
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