Keywords for a leadership definition

I don’t know you and I don’t know where you are. Where you spend your working life. Perhaps as leader in a corporation, or in an NGO, or in government, or in education, or the Church, or a religious institution. In the private or the public sector. All I know is that you are reading this and something somewhere must have made you do it.

So, yes, leadership is intriguing. Academics, practitioners, consultants, self-help gurus, generals, priests, rabbis, imams, political leaders and community workers are romancing, framing, developing and playing with the idea of leadership. It has been happening for a long, long time. The leadership shop is big. The bookshelves are full.

We have a wealth of surveys and data, categories and taxonomies, lists of leadership competences and styles. We have case studies and biographies, confessions of success and failure, supporters of charisma and supporters of an almost invisible leadership. We seem to have more information, knowledge and stories on the subject than we can handle. So, why does it still feel as if we know little about leadership?

My definition of leadership, and it is entirely personal is the ability to exercise meaningful influence on others who voluntarily accept it, leaving behind a visible legacy of collective impact.

Keywords are highly relevant here:
Influence: it could be translated into different forms: inspiration, reflection, sense of meaning, direction or, very possibly (but not necessarily and/or not always apparent), action!
Meaningful: I am assuming some magnitude or substantial degree, a directional change, a lasting impact, almost even, dare I say, teleological. I mean the provision of big-time meaning and purpose, not the short term ephemeral impact.
Others: the old definition of ‘leader’ (i.e. the one who has a follower) has not yet been matched by any academic!
Voluntarily: I am sorry, but it is not good enough that somebody has been declared my leader. Unless I accept it, there is no real leader. There may be an official party leader, team leader, executive leadership team or Supreme Leader, and I may even be resigned to using the terms BUT I am the only one who decides who my leader is. Let me expand on this. Leaders become, dictators arrive. Leadership is something that you earn, which means that there must be somebody giving it to you. That means there are followers. You can be my boss, my dictator, my inquisitor or my king by decree. But you can only be my leader when I say so and I ask you, and - incidentally - it would be nice if you accepted.
Legacy: Here, a whole spectrum of possibilities applies: from the wonderful memories to the big mess. But it must be something that’s left behind.