What Is a Leader: Being First and Acting Selflessly

I am currently studying at the EurAsia Higher School of Business (HSB EurAsia). One of the training sessions was devoted to leadership. We were asked to write down our own understanding of who a leader is. Mine turned out to differ from the instructor's. I wonder how others understand leadership.

Below is what I wrote:

The concept of a leader in our world is rather loose and multifaceted, and there are no clear criteria a person must meet to become a leader. Depending on the place, the environment and the situation, leaders can be different. In a textile factory, for example, the leader may be the person with the highest productivity; on a hockey team, the player who scores the most goals; in battle, the one who has spirit and knows no fear; and so on.

But there are two qualities that a leader must have, and it is their presence that, for me, is decisive in defining a leader: being first and having good intentions (selflessness) in one's actions.

Being first means excelling among the group of people around you, in the very thing that is the fundamental goal of that community. For example, if you sing better than anyone else on a football team, you will not become the team's leader, because the fundamental goal in football is to win. But you can become a leader in a restaurant or at a banquet, if you sing well.

Good intentions, or selflessness, means the ability to pursue the goals set by the group you belong to, placing them above your personal goals. Take football again: you may play very well, but if you aim to win a personal award, you are playing for yourself rather than for the team. In the end, such behavior inevitably begins to prevail over the team's common goal, and you lose your leadership, because you used it for personal ends.

A person can have oratorical gifts and lead crowds of people, but if all of this is done not for the common good but in pursuit of personal goals and ambitions, then, as a rule, that person's ego will not match his statements and actions. I call such people pseudo-leaders.

The world has many examples of pseudo-leaders who, possessing the quality of excellence, used it to pursue their personal ambitions and goals: Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Hugo Chávez, Saddam Hussein and many others. But there are people who are true leaders, who combine excellence with selflessness, and whose recognition becomes eternal and cannot be shaken by time. Examples are Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and many others. Each of them deserves attention and can serve as an example of what a true leader should be.