Today's paucity of effective leadership depends in part on the mistaken idea that leadership is a set of activities and behaviors isolated from everything else. Effective leadership, rather, is a product of the interdependence between leader behavior and a number of circumstantial variables. These variables include (1) the social, economic and political context of the organization; (2) the real (as distinct from ostensible) nature, goals, and objectives of the organization; (3) the history of the organization; (4) the needs of the organizational members; (5) the leader's own needs; (6) the task at hand; and (7) the nonnegotable factors in the situation. The range of functional leadership styles is arranged in a continuum from autocratic through democratic. The effective leader chooses behavior that ranges across a portion of the continuum, depending on the situational variables and his or her own personal needs. Unfortunately, more leaders, in the face of overwhelming demands, are more frequently moving beyond a democratic style of leadership to an "abdiocratic" style that means complete abdication of the leadership role. The effective leader today is one who can move from an assessment of the circumstantial variables to a realistic choice of leadership based on that assessment. (Author/JM)