All of great leaders evidence four basic qualities that are central to their ability to lead: adaptive capacity, the ability to engage others through shared meaning, a distinctive voice, and unshakeable integrity. These four qualities mark all exemplary leaders, whatever their age, gender, ethnicity, or race.

Good leaders make people feel that they're at the very heart of things, not at the periphery.

Power is the basic energy needed to initiate and sustain action or, to put it another way, the capacity to translate intention into reality and sustain it. Leadership is the wise use of this power: Transformative leadership.

Some of the strongest resistance to necessary change is the result of what Jim O'Toole has so aptly characterized as "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom."

Around the world, the generals are being ousted, and the poets are taking charge.

What makes a good follower? The single most important characteristic may well be a willingness to tell the truth. In a world of growing complexity leaders are increasingly dependent on their subordinates for good information, whether the leaders want to hear it or not. Followers who tell the truth and leaders who listen to it are an unbeatable combination.

Perhaps the central task of the leader of leaders thus becomes the development of other leaders.