Leadership: a Path to Career Satisfaction

Dave Anderson, a performance trainer, speaker, leadership expert and author of the book, No-NonsenseLeadership: Real World Strategies to Maximize Personal and Corporate Potential, offers the following observations to put leadership in its "proper perspective":

• Leadership is an opportunity. Having the title "leader" doesn't make you one; it merely affords you the opportunity to become one.

• Leaders strive to make their organizations great. To make the leap from good to great, you must keep changing, growing, risking, and following the daily disciplines that separate the truly committed from the merely interested.

• Leadership must be earned. A leader doesn't automatically have followers; he or she has subordinates. How you act as a leader determines whether your subordinates become your followers.

• Leadership requires results. Ultimately, leaders are measured by their results, not their good intentions.

• Leaders must help their people grow. The truest way to measure your leadership is by whether you improve the people on your team.

• Leaders must work on themselves. It's not enough to work hard on your job; you must work hard on yourself.

• Leaders lead by example. The number one way followers measure you is by whether you walk your talk. Actions speak volumes.

• Leadership is an acquired skill. Leadership is neither genetic nor discovered-it is developed over time.

• Leadership abilities are revealed in crises. It's easy to lead in good times, steering the momentum and leading the parade. But when a downturn occurs, your skills and abilities are on display. You're not made in a crisis, you are revealed in it.

• Leaders lean on their strengths and outsource their weaknesses. Know your strengths and face up to your weaknesses. Then, train your weaknesses away.

• Leaders are humble. Despite what you might think, you're not indispensable. Your enterprise will go on without you. Keep this in perspective and build a team to share the load. The best leaders balance a strong personal humility with a voracious ambition for their organization.