Q.Who is a leader?

Leadership is the art of motivating a group of people to act towards achieving a common goal. The leader is the person in the group who has the right combination of personality and leadership skills that makes others WANT to follow her/his direction — leadership is a set of characteristics, behaviours and style that shows up day-to-day in a person's thoughts, words and actions, not a one-time act.

Scholars define a leader in complementary ways: H.T. Mazumdar says "a leader is one who has power in authority." LaPierre frames leadership as "the behaviour that affects the behaviour of the people more than their behaviour affects that of a leader" — i.e., influence flows mainly FROM the leader. John C. Maxwell's well-known definition is that "a leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way" — knowledge, personal example, and guidance combined.

A leader's foremost function, pulling these definitions together, is to structure the situation for the group: setting the common goal, modelling the way to reach it (going the way personally, not just directing from the side), and regulating group behaviour along the way — for instance, by enforcing agreed rules firmly and fairly (through rewards for good conduct and consequences for bad conduct), never by ignoring differences, acting arbitrarily, or overlooking indiscipline, since all of those erode the very followership that makes someone a leader in the first place.