CHAPTER 2What Is Leadership?

By leadership we mean the art of getting someone else to do something that you want done because he wants to do it.

—DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER

Although the term leadership is frequently used, few executives in business today can be considered true leaders. The ultimate test of a leader is whether he or she will be followed as General Dwight Eisenhower was followed in the D-Day invasion by a task force composed of people from several different countries and cultures. For the followers to allow themselves to be led assumes their implicit belief in the leader’s ability.

Discussions that take place on the subject of leadership will tend to be centered on the inspirational but less tangible “Churchillian” qualities that can ...

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