What is leadership? perhaps the best way for you to begin to understand the complexities of leadership is to see some of the ways leadership has been defined. leadership researchers have defined leadership in the following different ways: - The creative and directive force of morale - the process by which an agent induces a subordinate to behave in a   desire manner - the presence of a particular influence relationship between two or more persons - Directing and coordinating the work of group members - An interpersonal relation in which others comply because they want to,   not because they have to. - Transforming followers, creating visions of the goals that may be attained,   and articulating for the followers the way to attain those goals - The process of influencing an organized group toward accomplishing its goals - Actions that focus resource to create desirable opportunities - The leader's job to create conditions for the team to be effective -------------------------------------------------------------------- Four types of Presidential Character The five concepts-character,world view,style,power situation, and climate of which cluster the Presidents since Theodore Roosevelt into four types. This is the fundamental scheme of the study. It offers a way to move past the complexities to the main contrasts and comparisons. The first baseline in defining Presidential types is activity-passivity. How much energy does the man invest in his Presidency? Lyndon Johnson went at his day like a human cyclone, coming to rest long after the sun went down. Calvin Coolidge often slept eleven hours a night and still needed a nap in the middle of the day. In between, the Presidents array themselves on the high or low side of the activity line. The second baseline is positive-negative affect toward one's activity-that is, how he feels about what he does. Relatively speaking, does he seem to experience his political life as happy or sad, enjoyable or discouraging,positive or negative in its main effect? The feeling I am after here is not grim satisfaction in a job well done, not some philosophical conclusion. The idea is this: is he someone who, on the surface we can see, gives force the feeling that he has fun in political life? Franklin Roosevelts "not only understood the use of power, they knew the enjoyment of power, too..Whether a man is burdened by power or enjoys power; whether he is trapped by responsibility or made free by it; whether he is moved by other people and outer forces or moves them-that is the essence of leadership." The positive-negative baseline, then, is q general symton of the fit between the man and his experience, a kind of register of felt satisfaction. Why might we expect these two simple dimensions to outline the main character types? Because they stand for two central features of anyone's orientation toward life. In nearly every study of personality, some form of the active-passive contrast is critical; the general tendency to act or be acted upon is evident in such concepts as dominance-submission, extraversion-introversion, aggression-timidly, attack-deffence, fight-fight, engagement-withdrawl, approach-avoidance. In everyday life we sense quickly the general energy output of the people we deal with. similarly, we catch on fairly quickly to the affect dimension-whether the person seems to be optimistic or pessimistic, hopeful or skeptical, happy or sad. The two baseline are clear and they are also independent of one another: all of us know people who are very active but seem discouraged, others who are quite passive but seem happy, and so forth. The activity baseline refers to what one does, the affect baseline to how one feels about what he does. Both are crude clues to character. They are leads into four basic character patterns long familliar in psychological research. In summary form, these are the main configurations: four basic character patterns are Active-Positive, Active-Negative, Passive-Positive and Passive-Negative.