Vodcovstvo ako úspešný predpoklad pre dosahovanie zvyšovania konkurenčnej schopnosti podnikov[Leadership - a key to success in achieving higher competitiveness at companies]

The idea of leadership has fascinated people for centuries. Leadership, or leading, is an asocial process, where the leader is seeking for voluntary participation of the subordinated, thus striving to achieve the company's objectives. Leadership clearly proves to be more than exercising power and authority. It also covers a number of managerial abilities, such as susceptibility, motivation, scrupulousness, empathy and communication. Leadership has to be present at all levels of the organization, thus creating reasonable conditions for achieving higher competitiveness by companies. Concerning management, there are many theories of leadership defining the influence of managers on subordinates, and there the term management can be understood a synonym to the term leadership since those too are perceived identical in meaning. There are different theories providing a wide range of views on the topic of leadership and its effective application. Many authors consider leading an inseparable part, and one of the most important functions of a manager's job; others consider such ability to lead people a key quality in managers. It is difficult to find or exactly specify a complex definition of leadership. It is hard to define the best way of practicing it. The aim of this contribution is to describe top managers in the role of main strategy planners and present leadership in the light of successful precondition for achieving competitiveness in a selected sample of companies in Slovakia.