The widely accepted idea, or concept of a "leader" is easy to understand. Based on history, a leader has been someone with courage, a man or woman that caused the general masses to want to follow them. This idea is straightforward and has been existent for thousands of years. Yet, i believe, once you really start to think about leaders and leadership in their entirety, it evolves into a much more complex issue.
I asked myself the simple, straightforward question; what about the followers? The only reason leaders are given the title, the office of a leader is because the people who choose to follow. A leader with no followers, no masses that are moved by him or her is not a leader at all. To truly understand this leader concept one must understand its followers.

The most important trait of a "leader" is courage. This hasn't changed for thousands of years. Atilla the hun was vicious and feared nothing. A more current example is Winston Churchill, a man who stood up without fear to the Nazi empire. This results is a resounding truth; although society has changed and accepted new things, the core beliefs have yet to be altered. To say fear is looked down upon would be false. But to say that society expects its leaders to have, better yet show no fear is entirely plausible. The followers are incredibly blunt in their hypocrisy. They expect this leader to transcend human essence and become something more. It is perfectly acceptable in the eyes of these followers, these members of normality, to feel fear and all other normal emotions. But to think that these leaders, these creatures of uniqueness, of incredible power, should feel these human emotions is asinine. This is the problem with the followers, the bulk of society. We forget that these leaders are, in the most basic sense, the same as every other human. So why are they leaders? It is because at a certain level they are different. Maybe they are less fearful, but maybe they are just better at masking their emotions. There are certainly qualities that leaders share yet the people who decide what "qualities" matter are the followers. Wealth, possessions, power, attractiveness. Followers have made the qualities that entail a leader shallow. The concept of leadership at a glance is straightforward but at a more detailed focus, it is a reminder of just how much power and hypocrisy the followers really possess.