Qualities: LEADERSHIP

Managers do things right; leaders do the right thing.
––Peter Drucker

If you can’t influence others, they won’t follow you. And if they won’t follow, you’re not a leader. That’s the Law of Influence. No matter what anybody else tells you, remember that leadership is influence—nothing more, nothing less.
––John C. Maxwell, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, 1998

Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible.
Management is easy. Leadership is motivating people, turning people on, getting 110% out of a personal relationship.
––Colin Powell, Secretary of State

Leadership is communicating to people their worth and potential so clearly that they come to see it in themselves.
––Stephen R. Covey, The 8th Habit, 2004

To Lead! What a feeling, to see others grasp your motivation and vision and charge ahead, especially after you have first failed and realized how difficult and magic it is.
––John Roberts

The simple definition of leadership is having a vision, motivating people to achieve it, and helping them to do so. From there, a thousand books could be written. Instead, let us develop a general understanding. From there, take your personal qualities and apply them to get the job done. One can make a lot of lists, do the job mechanically, but it works better if you study great leaders, read some of those books, know your job and build the confidence to take some people, fire them up and get on with it.

We will come back to this subject again and again. There are so many different kinds of organizations, from a few people to many nations, yet the basic principles still apply. Your job is to apply them to your own life and goals.

For an American, you can’t do much better to start than to read biographies of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. In almost every country, there are similar examples. These great men were thrust into the most important and difficult of circumstances, and they succeeded by drawing on deep resources that even they did not know they had. But, they demonstrated the basic qualities of great leadership: character, vision, determination, courage and the people skills of leadership. If those lives and successes do not inspire you to learn and understand the fundamental qualities of leadership, consider remaining a follower.