Introducing a grass‐roots model leadership

Many changes that have taken place in the work environment during the last 15 years have brought the challenges and opportunities of leadership dawn from the pedestal of formal management to the individual employee. People with no positional authority seem to have leadership challenges presented to them on an almost daily basis. This article summarizes new research on grass‐roots leadership. The study identified 17 leadership competencies as exhibited by a range of people — managers as well as non‐managers — in a wide variety of organizational roles. These competencies were then matched against a previous model of five leadership strategies. The result is a new definition of leadership, which shows that anyone can be a leader, regardless of tide or position.