Leadership in the 21st century has been redefined. In our current world, leaders are the ones who sell the tickets for the journey, while the managers are the ones who drive the bus to the destination. Leadership is something you know when you see it, but is very hard to describe.
Leaders have the power to make people do what they want and need them to do. By the strength of their personalities, they are able to motivate others to accomplish goals that they would otherwise never have even considered pursuing. Leaders can actually influence the beliefs, actions and feelings of their followers.
A leader can make people entirely change direction without question, and can come from any rung of the ladder in an organization. Even the lowest ranked employees can show leadership. Conventional wisdom always shows the heads of organizations as the leaders, but this isn't necessarily so. While they may get the credit, the real leaders are often much farther down in the ranks, and are the ones who cause the real change to take place on an every day basis. .
In other words, a leader is anyone who can show others the direction in which they need to move, and cause them to want to move in that direction. .
Leaders often have charismatic personalities. They exude a quality of authority that they may not even possess within the organization. Still, unexplainable, people want to do what they say, and go where they go. Often rather than emulating them, their followers are actually motivated to beat them.
Leaders often first show their leadership skills in crisis situations. They seem invisible until the need for innovation pops up, then there they are, seeming like they had been preparing for this all their lives. .
Leaders know what they want, why they want it, and are able to act creatively in unusual circumstances. They have the ability to make others understand what they want and to make them want to cooperate in reaching their goals.