J. Z. GAO
Classification
Leadership can be classified differently according to differ-
ent criteria.
First of all, it can be classified into individual leadership and
group leadership. Individual leadership refers to that of an indi-
vidual leader holding a certain post in an organization and that
is influenced by a leader’s peculiarity. In an organization, there
are three distinguishable levels of leaders: top, middle and
first-line, thus the demands for peculiarity are different. Group
leadership is the join force of individual leaders at the same
level in an organization. In such an organization, even though
an individual extends his or her leadership to the extreme, the
realization of goals and visions is still limited and depends on
the full development of the group leadership of all leaders. The
group leadership also has three levels: top, middle and first-line.
From the angle of the organizational levels, it can be classified
into top, middle level and basic level leadership. The top lead-
ership refers to the join forces of leaders at the top, the middle
level leadership of the leaders at the middle level, the basic
level leadership of the leaders at the basic level. All the three
interact with each other to form the organizing leadership
which means the join force of the group leadership at all levels
and results from the interaction among all the individual lead-
ership at the same levels and all the group leadership at distin-
guishable levels.
Function of Le ad ership
Leadership is a determining factor in the success of an
organization, and effective leadership is one of the key factors
in its growth, change and regeneration. The construction and
development involves different aspects among which leadership
is of great importance and occupies 45 percent in organizational
work (Bass & Stogdill, 1990). Leadership works greatly on the
realization of visions and goals. A leader lack of leadership,
like the front of a train short of driving force, is incapable to
lead all the members to move towards their shared goals. In
contrast, a leader with powerful leadership, like a front with
strong driving force, has great capability to lead his followers to
move toward destination. The front to a train is a leader to an
organization. From the view point of system theory, so long as
the organizational leadership is at its best, the harmony of an
organization appears and the visions and goals come true.
Current Situation
Leadership is a scarce resource. In the 21st century, the
greatest challenge of the business circle and organization is lack
of leaders with effective leadership (Uhl-Bien, Marion, &
McKelvey, 2007). Every organization needs to realize its vi-
sions and goals under the leadership of leaders with effective
leadership while currently, leaders in some organizations has no
leadership in match with their development (Lumby, 2009).
The leadership resources are out of proportion with the highly
developed economy and this prevents many organizations from
developing and leads to their inadaptability to the increasingly
competitive era and failing of many well-designed strategic
changes in forms such as difficult start, quitting on the half way
or thorough failure.
Leadership Marketing
The foremost peculiarity of a leader is his or her leadership
and its development is his or her greatest contribution to the
organization while the effective leadership depends on his or
her marketing as well as the cultivating and developing. Lead-
ership marketing refers to the process that a leader makes his
followers accept him so as to build his or her authority through
marketing his or her power and authority.
Individual Leadership Marketing
Individual leadership marketing indicates that a leader at a
certain level in an organization markets his or her personal
leadership. Any leader owns a certain leading power because of
different posts at the top, middle or the basic levels which is a
part of his or her personal leadership. Such part of leadership is
granted by an organization, and is positively associated with the
level a leader is in. That is to say, the higher level a leader is in,
the stronger leadership one has and vice versa. It is shown as
Figure 1.
Another part of leadership is a leader’s prestige. Generally
speaking, a leader’s prestige is also positively correlated with
his or her leadership: the higher prestige one has, the stronger
leadership he or she owns and vice versa. It is shown as Figure
2: a leader’s prestige should be accumulated daily, just like
greatness is the accumulation of small matters.
Based on our research group members’ surveys of the lead-
ership in some enterprises, by using factor analysis method and
normalization processing we can draw a conclusion that lead-
ership is under the mutual influences of the following 6 factors.
It can be shown in Table 1.
As can be seen from the table above that any individual
leader must pay attention to marketing himself from the aspects
mentioned above to improve his leadership so as to establish
Strong
Weak
Leadership
Top Middle Base
Leader Hierarchy
Figure 1.
Relation between leadership and leading levels.
Strong
Weak
Leadership
High Medium Low
Leader Prestige
Figure 2.
Relation between leadership and leader p r estige.
Open Access 79