Are You a Truly Good Leader or Merely an Effective One (and Why That Matters)
Earlier in my career, when I was working as a project manager, I ended up working on one of the largest building projects in London for one of the most successful property developers in the business. The guy was rich, was the boss of a large team, owned a powerful organisation and achieved big results. He was certainly an effective property developer. I also knew that his methods for achieving this success were questionable and I hated working for him. So was he a good leader?
But this definition does not quite capture the ideas of some types of leadership such as self-leadership, 360-degree leadership, or even thought-leadership. Therefore, my favourite definition of leadership is that of John Maxwell who says that leadership is, in its essence, influence. Thus, I would define leaders as people who use their influence (or power) to initiate change.
So, by logical extension, we can now define what effective leadership is. An effective leader does the same but can accomplish bigger goals, with more people. They have a greater level of influence and bring about larger change.
But again, here we see that effective leadership is not necessarily identical to good leadership. For example, Stalin led huge numbers of people and Hitler had a massive influence, but few people would describe them as good leaders.
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