Leadership is a practice not a position of authority

I have been thinking and reading about leadership for some years now, especially leadership in the context of Conversational Leadership but only recently learned of the work of Ronald Heifetz at Harvard and discovered that his views on leadership were remarkably similar to mine.

In this video he explains that leadership is a practice not a position of authority and gives some excellent examples.

Distinguishing leadership from authority helps us begin to see that if we understand leadership as a practice, as an activity, then it becomes available to anybody high or low, any place or position simply because they passionately care about some problem situation, about the people in that problem situation and then mobilize people with faith in their capacity to step up to the plate and meet that challenge.

Credit: Ronald Heifetz – On Leadership