Four Towering Conclusions About Leadership
All of the experience, thinking, testing and probing, interviewing, research, discussion, and observation that spawned my understanding of leadership also yielded four conclusions that tower over every other piece of knowledge.
The first towering conclusion is that people commit to other people, so anyone who wishes to lead, to win the commitment of others in order to create change, must become the kind of person who attracts commitment. It is more than a matter of learning skills or competencies. It is a matter of living a life. As one leader told me, “How wonderful would it be if you were known through your life as ‘Honest Abe’? How much could you do? Wouldn’t that be amazing, to have that reputation?”
