Abstract

We can find some sort of leadership almost everywhere: sport, family, religion, politics. But what do we mean by the word «leadership» properly understood? Starting from the terminological anchorage, the article shows that the Italian language does not posses a term that translates all facets of this controversial concept. While leadership has always been at the center of politics, the concept of «leadership» did not find a shared definition in the political science literature. Between the two families of definitions, the «relational» and the «positional» ones, the Author embraces the former, putting the stress on the relationship between leaders and followers and excluding the «positional» definition of the term since being a leader means more than having a position of power. The article puts forward a definition of leadership that tries to be less connotative than the existing ones, to be able to encompass a larger number of empirical referents. Therefore, leader's characteristics are not included in the definition, while the importance of contextual factor is strongly underlined.