Leadership and communication

There are lots of definitions given for leadership and everybody will have his own preference. I am not planning to summarize them here. If you are interested you can always go to a search engine to start a search.
What I think is special is that more and more people think that leadership is something you can learn and not a talent you are born with. Look for example at this site of Big Dog en Little Dog at the page about the concept of leadership.
Another example of a different way of thinking about what is important in leadership is the Dutch column by Bert Overbeek about what organizations can learn from termites on Management Site.
What is so special in the article by Bert Overbeek, is that it points out how much you can achieve with a good plan, that is clearly communicated and in which everybody works together. This article by Bert Overbeek gives me the idea, that a leader is the one who creates a well thought out plan and communicates it with those who will execute it. When this is done well, he makes sure that the cooperation runs smoothly. To be able to do this, the leader needs to understand the culture within his organization.
But his knowledge of other factors within his organization is also important, for example knowing how changes influence everybody within the organization.
But in the end all knowledge is useless, if you do not know how to communicate with others.