On Becoming a Leader

Leaders manage the dream by communicating a vision, recruiting carefully, rewarding, retraining and reorganizing.

Leadership rests on three key lessons: 1) Staying with the status quo won’t work, 2) The key to competitive advantage is a leader’s ability to create a social architecture that can generate intellectual capital and 3) Followers need direction, trust and hope from their leaders. Trust is pivotal for present and future leaders.

Success depends on ideas, relationships and adventure. Ideas provide the basis for change and intellectual capital. Relationships permit people to work in a harmonious, empowering environment. Adventure gives people a bias toward action, curiosity and courage. Leaders can express these ideas. They know themselves, and they learn to use their strengths to compensate for their weaknesses. They know what they want, why and how to convey those goals to gain support and how to achieve their essential purpose, their overarching vision.

Leaders agree on two basic points. First, they agree that leaders are made, not born, and made more by themselves than by the world around them. Second, they agree that leaders do not set out to prove...