Tuesday, January 20, 2009

In Search of the Holy Grail of Leadership

If you type in the word leadership into Google (at least today) you get 163,000,000 hits. Refine that to "business leadership" and you can narrow it down to 2,570,000.

I sort of wanted to see if somewhere I could find how many books or articles had been written on the subject but (a) I had no clue as to how to do that and (b) figured anyone reading this post would already know the same thing I do which is that this one word is the single most sought after characteristic in business and there is probably a strong case to be made for saying "on earth."

I write about this topic a lot, and I am not really sure why. Maybe it is because I have now lived long enough to realize just how critical it is on so many levels.

I certainly would not be so presumptuous as to try and define all the elements that come together to give us a leader. First of all I couldn't prove it and secondly I know from my own experience that what inspires me may or may not do the same for someone else.

But this much I feel very strongly, no matter what your political persuasion or biases might be, when you see and hear our new president you know that you are in the presence of a leader. Agree or not with what he plans to do or how he plans to do it, he absolutely projects the courage and commitment to lead.

I think we owe it to him and our country to follow.

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