Leadership is perhaps the hardest concept to define.

Warren Bennis once wrote, “It is almost a cliché of the leadership literature that a single definition of leadership is lacking. Author Joesph Rost commented on this dilemma by writing “The scholars do not know what they are studying, and the practitioners do not know what they are doing.” One group of scholars attempted to compile and synthesis the multitude of leadership definitions and encountered more than 90 dimensions. The definition they created from this synthesis is over 600 words long.

Yet despite the superfluous word counts and definitional dilemmas, one author and popular speaker has popularized the idea that leadership can be defined in one word:

Influence.

John Maxwell, billed often as America’s foremost authority on leadership, has made his career around the phrase: “Leadership is influence; nothing more, nothing less.” This is the key phrase has guided the writing of the most prolific leadership author in America and influences the work of countless others. As a result it is perhaps the commonly accepted definition of leadership.

It’s brief. It’s pithy. It’s wrong.

Like most commonly accepted notions, it is an over-simplification of the definition. It is incorrect precisely because it is too simple. It permits too many to claim the title of leader and at the same time prohibits observers from judging between good leadership and bad leadership. It is a simple, but incomplete definition of leadership.

But is a good start.

There’s more to leadership than influence.

In the coming series, I’ll explore why the Maxwell fallacy is incorrect and also how to build on Maxwell’s definition to produce a stronger, yet still simple definition.