[1] The Leaders’ Compass

Leadership is (often to believed to be) at the core of many things happening in the world, whether that’s the world of business, world of politics, or any other topic really. Read more about how leadership plays a fundamental role in our society in the ‘State of Leadership’ chapter in which we outline why it’s such a hot topic.

The latest trends (2025): an ever changing world

The world is changing and so are our expectations of leaders as well as their tools and mechanisms to influence us. At the same time, so much of what makes leadership leadership, haven’t changed at all and many of the fundamental tested practices still apply.

Defining Leadership: But what is leadership?

There are many different definitions, but the definition we like most is an adapted version of the definition offered by P.G. Northouse in Leadership: Theory & Practice, which will be used to structure the knowledge library:

Leadership is the process whereby an individual (self) influences [1] others [2] to achieve [3] a common vision [4]

You can learn more about the definition in ‘Definition of Leadership’ chapter in which we try to break down the various components explore a bit more how leadership can be viewed upon.

Leadership as a process:

The activity of Leading:

The Leadership Roles: The different leadership archetype and layers.

Leadership is a behavior, it’s something you do. But based on the role the expectations we have of leaders may differ. We are not expecting the same leadership behaviors from a first time manager than that of a vetted executive.

So although we have defined leadership as a process / activity; we still want to call out the importance of an individual’s role and how that shapes their behavior. Based on the famous model from the Leadership Pipeline we identify therefor several role archetypes in which we cluster the various leadership types.

In the ‘Leadership Role Archetypes’ chapter we explore more what the differences may be between individual contributors, people managers, and functional heads.

Various lenses on Leadership: Recognising our bias

When talking about leadership it is important to note that each of us are looking through different lenses, whether that is based on our

References in the 4C Model: We didn’t ‘invent’ any of this

Leadership versus … : What Leadership is not