Leaders always lead, followers may not always follow

I had mentioned sometime back that Leadership is Situational. The same person who is accepted as a leader at one time is rejected at some other time. I used the examples of Alexander, Mahatama Gandhi and Churchill.

Now, the questions arises, Leaders are always the same, well, leader-like. So, how come leadership becomes situational? How come a person is leader in one situation and not in another situation?

The people who are leader-like (i.e. the ones taking the lead) are always leader-like (i.e. they always take the lead). However, people may not follow them all the time. In India, at the point of time, so many people are trying to take the lead towards better governance but how many followers have they got? They are still leader-like but there are no followers for them.

Tomorrow, when people are just too fed up with the current state of governance (as much as that they decide to take some “real” action), the same set of leaders (social-activists as they are called) will emerge as leaders.