Leadership in Agricultural Research Management

Leadership is the ability to give focus and vision to others, clearly identifying goals to which others also aspire, thus increasing productivity, efficiency, and impact. Leadership functions at different levels and in different capacities. It is different from management or administration. It is visionary, but also has to be practical, and it operates at many different levels within organisations. Leadership of small numbers of people can be as important as leading many hundreds or thousands of people. In fact, the leadership of a large or complex organisation cannot usually function well unless there are other leaders at a lower level able to implement the leader’s vision by leading smaller groups of people towards common goals.