Kouzes and Posner of "The Leadership Challenge" assert that "Leadership is everybody's business", and that has become another familiar tagline that most of us know and acknowledge, at least publicly. Studies in leadership, what makes great leaders great, how to improve in leadership skills, etc. have been going on for a long time now. A great deal of knowledge on the subject of leadership has obviously been amassed. In addition, many leadership gurus have emerged, each of them distilling the quintessence of leadership as they saw it, presenting it in various forms in laudable attempts to raise the quality of leadership worldwide.

In the light of these developments, one would think that the quality of leadership across the globe has improved tremendously over the last few decades. But has it? Many would assert that it has, citing various examples of how authoritarian leadership styles of times past have been steadily giving way to to the supposedly more enlightened styles of consultative leadership, servant leadership, self-leadership, courageous leadership, charismatic leadership and many others. People in general seem to think that leaders of old had it easier, that all they had to do was make a wish, and their wish would somehow be fulfilled by a horde of unthinking slaves. They seem to think that military leaders in particular have it easy, that those under them would obey orders simply because those orders were backed by the whole weight of military discipline. It is a dangerous state of mind to indulge in, because we then tend to ignore the lessons of the past and focus our attention excessively on constantly emerging fads. We need to look around us and count those leaders who are obviously great leaders, if such can indeed still be found. I say this because it is obvious to me that failures in leadership at all levels are becoming more and more manifest worldwide, and I do not think that more transparent reporting is the main cause.

There is not much we can do about failing leadership worldwide, but we can all do something about our own leadership qualities. Here are three essential points that will help us tremendously in so doing. They are:

1.  Preaching what we practice.

2.  Having our organization's raison d'etre as our own.

3.  Great relationships with all our stakeholders.

Yes, you got that right. Most of us would be familiar with the term "Practice what you preach" instead. As Dr Ivan Misner of BNI likes to say "Your actions thunder so loudly above your head I cannot hear the words you are saying". As we continually strive to improve ourselves, we need to be honest and let our constituents know that, while we are reaching for an ideal, we are not there yet, and we need all the help we can get in order for us to get there. Having said that, we need to consciously, deliberately and daily internalize right principles of life so that we become their unconscious expression. When we have internalized the right principles, our actions become a reflection of what those principles are. We remain steadfast in turbulent times, even as we manoeuvre astutely to shape the business sphere in ways that allow us to deliver our greatest value to all our stakeholders. Many leaders fail simply because they forget what the ultimate state of being is. They forget because they become too engrossed in the tactical details of current day-to-day challenges. So, once a day, more often if necessary, take a step back and reflect - with all the hustle and bustle, are you still on track with regard to your own internalized principles, and are you still moving forward towards the strategic goals of your business?

Many leaders fail when their organizations' raison d'etre, the reason for their existence, very often encapsulated in their vision statements, become different from their own. A root cause of this is that many vision statements are not expressed at the appropriate strategic level and therefore fail to capture the essence of what the organization IS rather than what it sets out to do. Today, we are all talking about "Organizational Values", "Organizational Culture" and so on, hoping that our organizations will outlast the leadership, but I maintain that if the spirit of the leader is not the spirit of the organization, that leader is going to fail. We need to find the embodiment of our spirit in the organizations that we lead. If this is not true for any leader, then someone else should be leading that organization. Are you the best leader for your organization?