Leaders establish the vision for the future and set the strategy for getting there.

Leadership is about setting a direction. It's about creating a vision, empowering and inspiring people to want to achieve the vision, and enabling them to do so with energy and speed through an effective strategy. In its most basic sense, leadership is about mobilizing a group of people to jump into a better future.

Great communicators have an appreciation for positioning. They understand the people they're trying to reach and what they can and can't hear. They send their message in through an open door rather than trying to push it through a wall.

Valued achievements connect to people at a deeper level—and a deeper level can change behavior that is generally very difficult to change.

In terms of getting people to experiment more and take more risk, there are at least three things that immediately come to my mind. Number one, of course, is role-modeling it yourself. Number two is when people take intelligent, smart risks and yet it doesn't work out, not shooting them. And number three, being honest with yourself. If the culture you have is radically different from an experiment and take-risk culture, then you have a big change you going to have to make—and no little gimmicks are going to do it for you.

Over the years I have become convinced that we learn best - and change - from hearing stories that strike a chord within us ... Those in leadership positions who fail to grasp or use the power of stories risk failure for their companies and for themselves.

Managers are trained to make incremental, programmatic improvements. They aren't trained to lead large-scale change.