Despite a good planning process, competent personnel, effective structure and adequate control mechanisms, no organisation can succeed without proper leadership. On the one hand, under a good leadership even a venture with many shortcomings can succeed. On the other hand, a poor leader will be unable to sustain a promising venture. For a leader to be effective the following are very important:

The Thirukural deals extensively with these aspects. But before we come to these it will be interesting to see contemporary thoughts on this subject.

Leadership can best be described as a process by which a person influences others within the organisation to accomplish an objective and directs the organisation in a way that makes it more cohesive and coherent. Leaders carry out this process by applying their leadership attributes, such as beliefs, values, ethics, character, knowledge, and skills. Although his position as manager or supervisor grants a person the authority to accomplish certain tasks and objectives in the organisation, this power does not make a leader out of him; it simply makes the person the boss. Leadership differs in that; it motivates the followers to achieve high goals, rather than simply have someone bossing people
around.