Allie Hopkins

Leadership is a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal. The main task of the leader is to get people from a place where they remain to the place where they have not been. However, leadership is not only an ability or personal charisma. Leadership can be defined as an art, and everybody needs to find one’s own approach to it. Therefore, leadership can be described with the help of three different terms, such as dream, ambition, and listening. They function by complementing each other. For that reason, these three keywords are appropriate to define leadership. The exclusive paper seeks to explain the importance of these terms in defining leadership.

First of all, one of the main key words of leadership is a “dream.” A leader needs to have a dream, because dreams enable them to know exactly what they need. Leadership is nothing without dreams. The reason is that the dream lets the leader guide the team and exhibits courage and confidence to lead the team to overcome the difficulty. Therefore, a dream to the leader is like a lighthouse to the ship. It can let the leader have a clear target and changed vision. The story about a famous leader Thomas Jefferson can be an example. While Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed", he was writing about dream. During that period, no European government embraced democracy. Everyone thought his dream was absurd and elusive, since there had been very few real democracies in the West. The only country which had achieved democracy was Athens, but it happened two thousand years ago. Taking everything into account, Jefferson managed to do it and made his dream come true. He motivated people to take action through hard work. Even nowadays, his dream motivates people to fight for democracy all over the world. Henceforward, Thomas Jefferson became an American Founding Father, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, and, subsequently, the third President of the United States. It can be argued that a good leader needs to have not a goal or target, but rather a dream. When leaders act on their dream, they become courageous and strong. Therefore, a dream is an essential part of leadership.

The second key word in leadership is “ambition”. Ambition is an essential requirement in leadership. It provides energy and inspiration to ensure leaders that they do not give up. If a leader lacks ambition, he/she can only lead his team or company in a circle, even worse the company may gradually get phased out. This point can be enforced by John D. Rockefeller who was the founder of Standard Oil Company, which dominated in the oil industry and was the first great US business person. He was an ambitious businessman. Once Rockefeller said, “I had no ambition to make a fortune. Mere money-making has never been my goal. I had an ambition to build” (“Be ambitious”). In addition, a French great leader, Napoleon Bonaparte, was once an ordinary person when he was a soldier, but he refused mediocrity. At last, he left the French army and became a political leader who rose to fame during the last stages of the French Revolution and is associated with wars in Europe. Finally, good leadership can help a leader to succeed together with his team or group. Therefore, ambition is an essential quality in leadership as it gives additional power to overcome numerous challenges.

The third key word concerning leadership is “listening”. A good leader should not be a dictator rather he or she should be a good listener. A leader should make his/her subordinates feel important, and this feeling can make them become more willing to follow the leader. Furthermore, leaders should listen to their subordinates enabling them the capacity for independent thoughts which are good for the personal development of the team. For instance, nowadays, many IT companies will provide diaries of brainstorm activities. The main importance of the activity is to enable the leader to listen to the subordinates giving them an opportunity to interact with each other, and showing their opinions or thoughts about the company. This provides for a double win because of the leader’s disability to handle everything by him. Therefore, leaders decrease their pressure of work by listening to the subordinate. On the other hand, subordinates become more motivated to work. Eventually, listening is a vital tool which enables a leader to manage a team. Moreover, subordinates have the other benefits from it. Therefore, leaders who listen to their subordinates achieve numerous merits with no disadvantages.

Almost all famous and well-known leaders had many common features. All of them had a great dream, ambitions, and were good listeners. In this respect, they did a great job when they led a company, country, or even the world. The only reason can explain why they achieved this. Everything is because of their fantastic leadership features. Good leadership can be compared to a magician’s magic wand: if somebody got it, one can turn incredible to possible, one can get something special, and one can make anything happen. However, dream, ambition, and listening are three things that are essential constituents of leadership. Without one of these three things, the magic wand can lose its “magic”.