bloggedy blog

:: Friday, April 21, 2006 ::

Friday Five: leadership
Just back from an intense, four-day professional development seminar. The hotel's Internet connection was spotty, which is why visitors to this blog in recent days have had to read over and over my hero worship of Albert Pujols. I'll be back to full steam next week, I promise. But in the meantime, I wanted to share a definition of leadership that I heard from one of the facilitators (who also happens to be a blogger, which is yet another reason to appreciate his insights).

The definition comes from Robert Freed Bales, a distinguished professor of psychology at Harvard for many years. He defines leadership as:

• the maximization of unification
  
• the minimization of polarization
  
• the avoidance of scapegoats

That's one of the best definitions I've ever heard. A little too much nounization of verbs -- I'm not too wild about the zationization of our language these days -- but the concept is what's most important here, not the wording. Besides, I can't think of a better way to crystalize those ideas. Can you?

But Andrew, you say, what does this have to do with Friday Five? Here's your Friday Five challenge: Come up with five other definitions of leadership and drop them in the comments form below.

Off to catch up on email. See you on Monday -- or maybe over the weekend.

leadership, Friday Five, professional development, personal development

:: Andrew 07:26 + ::
...

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