Career Help and Advice

1) Getting the job done;
2) Keeping the group together.

I could write a thesis on what these two principles encompass, and how they apply to any given task, but for a simple (not necessarily simplistic) definition of the job of leadership, it's hard to think of anything better. I teach leadership training course for a youth group, and these two concepts pretty well summarize it. I ask people to visualize these on a graph, with each one on a different axis. If the leader is high on one axis and low on the other (or low on both), then they are not accomplishing the task of a leader. If the job gets done, but everyone is at each other's throats, that's a leadership failure; if everybody's happy as larks, but the job doesn't get completed, that's a leadership failure. The objective is to be high on both counts, obviously. The leader's task then becomes to figure out how to achieve those, given the personnel, the personalities, and the resources he has to work with. (if I had the ultimate answer to THAT, I'd be retired right now on my own nice little private island (like, say, Hawaii!), and sipping pina coladas on the beach of my choice!