1.1 Leadership is a practice

Figure 2 Leadership involves working together

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This is a photograph of a black female engineer and her white male colleague working on a drone project together.

Figure 2 Leadership involves working together

The first thing to note is that leadership is a practice. It is about what people do rather than who they are. Leadership is a verb – a ‘doing’ word, like running, talking and walking. Unless there is action there can be no leadership, as nothing would be happening. Leadership practice is distinctive from running and walking, however, in the sense that it requires another person to be involved. Without someone else being present there can be no-one to follow, and no-one to lead.