What is the difference between Power and Leadership?

If you don't take your time and consider these two words; power and leadership, you might easily conclude that they are referring to the same thing. Power refers to the capacity of an individual to have a level of dominion or control over others in a bid to effect a change. The power of an individual can be noticed in the way you are being influenced by their presence. Leadership, on the other hand, is the ability of someone to lead. Leadership is a term which everybody is familiar with.

Leadership is all about having a vision and working on the various ways through which those visions can be actualized by leading other people. When it comes to leadership, people usually sought after a credible and capable person, but you may not need to consider that in power. Power is gotten only when you assume a position of authority, while leadership is an important attribute that can be seen in a person. You can have power, and you may not have leadership skills, but you need power before you can lead.

Power is a person's ability to control the activities of other individuals. Power can be misused and abused if it falls into the wrong hands. Leadership is the capability to inspire people to follow your lead voluntarily and accomplish the completion of a project without practicing any force. There are many different types of power, including coercive, legitimate, expert, referent, and reward.

There are many kinds of leadership, including autocratic, democratic, transformational, non- archaeal, and laissez-faire. A leader is a competent individual who creates a vision, encourages people to work hard, coaches, and builds the team that will enact the concept, and delivers it. Power can often be corrupt.

In my opinion, power and leadership are very different words from one another. Though both words are connected in managing and controlling people in a given group, if you think deeper, they are very far different from each other. Power is the ability to act on something. An example is a president has the power to govern a country, he or she can approve laws passed to him or he or she can give a go signal to a new project with just a click of his finger.

Leadership, on the other hand, for me, is a characteristic that people are naturally born with it or can be developed over time. You may not be the president or the CEO of a company, but with your leadership skills, people will learn to respect you and look upon you.

Power is needed by people so that they can do certain things. For example, a person should have the power so that he will be able to control and lead a group of people to complete a project. Usually, a person’s power may end when the project is done.

Power is sometimes needed to become a good leader, but leadership means that you are able to make people follow your instructions. Some people may only follow because they are scared and not because they truly want to. A good leader can make people want to do certain tasks because they truly believe in the cause or the outcome of the project.