Five
Essential Elements For Leadership
By Richard J. McGowan
Award-winning historian Robert Dallek, who authored tomes on Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan, has oft-stated that we have entered "a new era in which chief executives will need to provide effective leadership both for an ever larger, more complicated domestic society and a nuclear-armed world endangered by national passions and apocalyptic ideologies."
Dallek, of course, was basically alluding to the crises facing presidents and other world leaders. But his clairvoyant concern applies equally to CEOs, corporate moguls and small business leaders. It will take business executives with specific skills and assets to meet the challenges of a world shattered and shaken by the carnage of November 11th and the ensuing global war on terrorism.
First among those talents is Vision. Every leader, whether he be in government or on the corporate stage, must have a vision, an insight or a clear understanding of where he wishes to lead in a quest for a better future.
PRAGMATISM is another necessary asset. The most successful executives have always been those who were blessed with the ability to lead through sensible opportunism and were flexible to changing economic conditions at home and abroad.
Gains have always depended on top-to-bottom teamwork in any organization. If presidential gains depend on the consent of the governed, corporate executives depend on their ability to clearly communicate through the ranks of their employees. So CONSENSUS-BUILDING is a vital ingredient; without it executives are courting disaster.
CHARISMA is that personal connection between an executive that flows through his top staff down to the lowest levels of any organization. The force of personality and the ability to clearly articulate directions can determine an executive's fate.
Presidents, corporate executives and bureaucrats at all levels need credibility. With TRUSTWORTHINESS, they can govern and lead. Without it, they will lose the respect of their employees.
Those are the five key ingredients to leadership. If the White House at the beginning of the 21st century is as removed from George Washington's day as the jet plane is from the horse and buggy, the national and global responsibilities faced by today's business leaders dwarf those of his 1790 counterparts.
But the leadership qualities of the men who have succeeded in office in the public and private sectors have not changed in over 200 years.
Richard J. McGowan, former White House Correspondent for The New York Daily News, served in the Reagan-Bush and Bush-Quayle Administrations. He was public affairs director for six federal agencies and also worked on Capitol Hill.