What qualities determine a good leader? We tend to think of leadership as a quality needed only by CEO's, government officials, and other authority figures. However, Sheila Murray Bethel in her book, Making a Difference: 12 Qualities that Make You a Leader, says that we all have opportunities in our daily lives to be leaders and to make a difference in the world around us. She emphasizes that true leaders look for opportunities to serve others, and that self-serving leadership ultimately fails. If you wonder whether you have what it takes to be an effective leader, compare your method of performance with the 12 characteristic ways recognized leaders perform.

1. 1. Do you have a mission that matters?
   When you think about strong leaders you have known, it's likely they all displayed a clearly-defined purpose in life, which gave them a sense of direction. It's also likely that their mission was not self-centered, but rather made a difference in some way for others. People such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Candy Lightner (who started "Mothers Against Drunk Driving" after her daughter was killed by a drunk driver) illustrate that anyone who knows his or her mission in life can be a true leader.

   If you don't know what your mission is, think about the things you enjoy doing and what you are most inspired by. You will know you've found your true life mission when you feel as though you are doing what you were meant to do.

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3. 2. Do you think big?
   Big thinking is the magnet that attracts others. Big thinkers see beyond immediate realities to distant possibilities. Projecting this "vision" inspires others to join them. Important elements in thinking big include believing that for every problem there is a solution and using imagination as a creative resource to solve problems.
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5. 3. Do you demonstrate high ethics?
   Being able to admit to mistakes is an example of high ethics. True leaders maintain high standards and deal honorably with others. They have the courage to put ethics first and speak up for what they believe in. Behaving ethically helps others trust them. Dr. Stephen Covey says, "If you want to build trust, you have to start by being trustworthy." While most of us think we are ethical, we sometimes find ourselves in situations where living up to our ethical believes is difficult. These situations separate true leaders from everyone else.
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7. 4. Do you respond well to change?
   Between 1970 and 2020, the amount of change people will experience will equal that which occurred in the 500 year period prior to 1970. Effective leaders have the ability to move with the times. They maintain a positive, flexible attitude toward change. They may even act as change agents themselves, identifying changes that need to be made and initiating them.
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9. 5. Do you have sensitivity?
   Sensitive leaders show empathy for others' needs. They give support and understanding without becoming overwhelmed by others' problems. They are aware of how their own behavior and attitudes influence the people around them. Effective leaders use their sensitivity to help others get what they want, thereby inspiring loyalty in their followers.
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11. 6. Do you take risks?
    Effective leaders have the courage to take risks. They try, even when the odds are against them. However, they stay on the right side of the fine line between taking calculated risks and indulging in foolish recklessness.
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13. 7. Do you make good decisions?
    Effective leaders act decisively, know this can make the difference between mediocrity and greatness. Being indecisive can waste time, money, and energy. If you delay too long, other people or circumstances decide for you. Making effective decisions requires good judgment.
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15. 8. Do you use power wisely?
    Effective leaders recognize the responsibility that accompanies power. They use their power to influence people and circumstances, without being manipulative. They learn to share power with others, a process known as "empowerment." In her book, Bethel points out that personal power is much more important that position power. Those who influence others only through the power of their positions lose their power when they lose their positions. Personal power goes with you, regardless of your role or circumstances.
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17. 9. Can you communicate effectively?
    The secret of good communication is not just in how well you speak, but in how well you listen. The quality of communication is more important than the quantity. This is especially important in stressful situations. For example, in conflicts, how you say something is just as important as what you say. In addition, Bethel points out that the ability to translate our own internal emotional reactions into well-considered responses is essential to good communication.
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19. 10. Are you a team player?
    In today's world, with the trend toward using teams to solve problems, the ability to help a group of people work together is becoming increasingly important. Whether a person is officially the team leader doesn't matter. Every team member has the power to influence the climate of the group in a significant way, and the internal dynamics of the group can determine the quality of the group's output.
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21. 11. Are you courageous?
    Although we usually think of courage as being needed only in times of danger, is is also needed when decisive action offers benefits, but there are accompanying risks. Taking responsibility for your decisions and actions, whatever the outcome, requires courage, as does admitting you made a mistake.
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23. 12. Are you willing to make a serious commitment?
    Commitment is the glue that holds the other 11 leadership characteristics together. You demonstrate commitment through tenacity when the going becomes difficult. Committed people make sacrifices for what they believe in.
    
    

Ways to Identify a Promising Person

The most gifted athletes rarely make good coaches. The best violinist will not necessarily make the best conductor.  The best actor or techie will not make the best stage manager or director. Nor will the best teacher necessarily make the best head of the department.

So it's critical to distinguish between the skill of performance and the skill of leading the performance, two entirely different skills.

It's also important to determine whether a person is capable of learning leadership. The natural leader will stand out. The trick is identifying those who are capable of learning leadership over time.

Here are several traits to help identify 
whether someone is capable of learning to lead.

• * Leadership in the past. The best predictor of the future is the past. 
  
  
• *A person who doesn't feel the thrill of challenge is not a potential leader.
  
  
• * People locked in the status quo are not leaders. I ask of a potential leader, Does this person believe there is always a better way to do something?
• 
  
• *A willingness to take responsibility.  Carrying responsibility doesn't intimidate me, because the joy of accomplishment-the vicarious feeling of contributing to other people-is what leadership is all about.
  
  
• *A completion factor.  The ability to get things done.  The person who grabs hold of the problem and won't let go, like a dog with a bone, has leadership potential. This quality is critical in leaders, for there will be times when nothing but one's iron will says, "Keep going."   In the military, it is called "completed staff work." With potential leaders, when the work comes in, it's complete. 
  
• 
  *Mental toughness. No one can lead without being criticized or without facing discouragement. A potential leader needs a mental toughness. I don't want a mean leader; I want a tough-minded leader who sees things as they are and will pay the price. Leadership creates a certain separation from one's peers. The separation comes from carrying responsibility that only you can carry.  A leader must be able to keep his or her own counsel until the proper time.
  
  
• *Peer respect. Peer respect doesn't reveal ability, but it can show character and personality. Trammell Crow, one of the world's most successful real estate brokers, said that he looks for people whose associates want them to succeed. He said, "It's tough enough to succeed when everybody wants you to succeed. People who don't want you to succeed are like weights in your running shoes." Maxey Jarmen used to say, "It isn't important that people like you. It's important that they respect you. They may like you but not follow you. If they respect you, they'll follow you, even if perhaps they don't like you."
  

  

   

  Quotes by Dr. Stephen R. Covey

  
  A cardinal principle of Total Quality escapes too many managers: you cannot continuously improve interdependent systems and processes until you progressively perfect interdependent, interpersonal relationships.
  
  Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.
  
  Every human has four endowments- self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom... The power to choose, to respond, to change.
  
  I am personally convinced that one person can be a change catalyst, a "transformer" in any situation, any organization. Such an individual is yeast that can leaven an entire loaf. It requires vision, initiative, patience, respect, persistence, courage, and faith to be a transforming leader.
  
  If we keep doing what we're doing, we're going to keep getting what we're getting.
  
  In the last analysis, what we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do.
  
  Live out of your imagination, not your history.
  
  Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.
  
  Our character is basically a composite of our habits. Because they are consistent, often unconscious patterns, they constantly, daily, express our character...
  
  Public behavior is merely private character writ large.
  
  The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.
  
  The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.
  
  There are three constants in life... change, choice and principles.
  
  We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey.
  

• Final Thoughts...

  The title of leader can't be claimed; it can only be earned. Like beauty, leadership is in the eye of the beholder. Leaders choose to be actors in the world, not merely reactors or followers. We all have the ability and talent to be leaders. Your leadership potential can be realized when you treat each day as your one and only chance to make a positive difference in your world and personal life.
  
  

Do you have what it takes to become a leader or 
will you be willing to do what it takes to grow into a leader?

Other famous Quotes

ART

Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.
Stella Adler

Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.
Cecil Beaton

Great art picks up where nature ends.
Marc Chagall

I cry out for order and find it only in art.
Helen Hayes

I ALWAYS try to balance the light with the heavy - a few tears of human spirit 
in with the sequins and the fringes.
Bette Midler

The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.
Pablo Picasso

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.
George Bernard Shaw

I've been called many names like perfectionist, difficult and obsessive. I think it takes obsession, takes searching for the details for any artist to be good.
Barbra Streisand

Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.
Twyla Tharp

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.
Oscar Wilde

Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality 
to the world he lives in.
Amy Lowell

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow that talent to the dark place where it leads.
Erica Jong

The most profound things are inexpressible.
Jenny Holzer

Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible. 
I think it's in my basement... let me go upstairs and check.
M. C. Escher

We adore chaos because we love to produce order.
M. C. Escher

True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.
Albert Einstein

That is what the title of artist means: one who perceives more than his fellows, 
and who records more than he has seen.
Edward Gordon Craig

One should never criticize his own work except in a fresh and hopeful mood. 
The self-criticism of a tired mind is suicide.
Charles Horton Cooley

IMAGINATION

The man who has no imagination has no wings.
Muhammad Ali

Never tell people how to do things. 
Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
George S. Patton

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.
George S. Patton

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
Mark Twain

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.
Henry David Thoreau

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.
Carl Sagan

Trust that little voice in your head that says "Wouldn't it be interesting if.."; And then do it.
Duane Michals

What I cannot see is infinitely more important than what I can see.
Duane Michals

There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings; 
but none when they are under the influence of imagination.
Edmund Burke

Imagination has brought mankind through the dark ages to its present state of civilization. 
Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity.
L. Frank Baum

SUCCESS



The toughest thing about success is that you've got to keep on being a success.
Irving Berlin

Don't confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.
Erma Bombeck

I honestly think it is better to be a failure at something you love 
than to be a success at something you hate.
George Burns

Flaming enthusiasm, backed up by horse sense and persistence, 
is the quality that most frequently makes for success.
Dale Carnegie

Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm.
Winston Churchill

In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.
Bill Cosby

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
Bill Cosby

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no point in being a damn fool about it.
W. C. Fields

Don't aim for success if you want it; just do what you love and believe in, and it will come naturally.
David Frost

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.
Abraham Lincoln

The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.
Theodore Roosevelt

Success is dependent on effort.
Sophocles

Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it... Success is shy -
it won't come out while you're watching.
Tennessee Williams

Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure.
George E. Woodberry

Success in almost any field depends more on energy and drive than it does on intelligence.
This explains why we have so many stupid leaders.
Sloan Wilson

The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity.
Ayn Rand

A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.
David Brinkley

My success is talent put together with hard work and luck.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

What is acting?

• Humphrey Bogart:
  Acting is experience with something sweet behind it.
  
  
• Sir Charles Chaplin:
  Timing! My mother gave me that. I was born with it. I don't think you can teach a person to act.
  [Radio Times, March 1979]
  
  
• Glenda Jackson: You'd think is something one would grow out of. But you grow into it. The more you do, the more you realize how painfully easy it is to be lousy and how very difficult to be good.
  [People, March 1985]
  
  
• Vanessa Redgrave: I give myself to my parts as a lover. It's the only way.
  [Time, 17 March 1967]
  
  
• Robert De Niro: One of the things about acting is it allows you to live other people's lives without having to pay the price. I've never been one of those actors who has touted myself as a fascinating human being. I had to decide early on whether I was to be an actor or a personality.
  
  
• Lawrence Barrett, 19th Century American Actor: Acting is... forever carving a statue of snow.
  
  
• Robert Redford: A lot of what acting is paying attention.
  
  
• Jeff Goldblum: Acting is nothing more or less than playing. The idea is to humanize life.
  
  
• Glenda Jackson: Acting is not about dressing up. Acting is about stripping bare. The whole essence of learning lines is to forget them so you can make them sound like you thought of them that moment.