Leadership in Context

My studies of leadership build on the work of Sigmund Freud, Erich Fromm, and Erik Erikson. Those psychoanalysts described leaders of large groups, their personalities and relations with their followers. In my studies of leaders and experience with them, I have found that leadership is a relationship in a particular context. There are different kinds of leaders, and someone can be a leader in one context, but not in another. Furthermore, different leadership roles and different cultures call for different personality types and leadership behavior. People follow leaders for different reasons, and leaders can influence why and how they are followed. While Freud, Fromm, and Erikson only described male leaders, women are increasingly filling leadership roles, sometimes more effectively than men.