Effective leaders make a full commitment to be a learner, to keep increasing and nourishing their knowledge and wisdom.

The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born - that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That's nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born.

Leaders know the importance of having someone in their lives who will unfailingly and fearlessly tell them the truth.

A new leader has to be able to change an organization that is dreamless, soulless and visionless... someone's got to make a wake up call.

Keep reminding people of what's important and that their fates are correlated.

A leader is someone whose actions have the most profound consequences on other people's lives, for better or worse, sometime forever and ever.

Think of a crucible as an occasion for real magic, the creation of something more valuable than an alchemist could possibly imagine. In it, the individual is transformed, changed, created anew. He or she grows in ways that change his or her definition of self.