Leadership is among other things the process by which people are influenced to accomplish objectives. However, it's different from the processes of direction or management. I believe it's also a process that involves more of the intangibles, values and character then the other processes involved in governing an organization.
Leadership is also generally associated with an individual, or group... direction, and management are related to position. It's an important distinction, because in our development as people it's not unusual to see people who confuse positional power, and leadership.
Ask yourself; what kinds of leaders do you follow?
I believe, that those leaders may be good managers, good at direction, good at lots of things, but when you look at them all good leaders are uniformly people you find worthy of your trust, credible, and realistic.
A longtime coworker who managers a large organization, and works hard to lead recently talked to his people about rebuilding trust. It can be done, but it's very very hard and it takes a long time. However, it's near impossible if the would be leader broke things to begin with.
Faced with downsizing and other really hard choices his management team had (his opinion and mine) lost the trust of their team... How did he get in trouble?
It did not happen overnight... but here is what I think happened, his team failed to do three things well.
So here's what I believe; as leaders:
Values make a leader someone you want to follow. Explicit understanding of values also creates a level of resilience in the face of change that doesn't exist without them.