"In simplest terms, a leader is one who knows where he wants to go, and gets up, and goes."

-- John Erksine

• The most important action of a leader is service.  Great leaders serve those who they lead - getting them the tools they need, teaching them, and modeling for them.
  
  
• Leadership can be taught and learned, as can the principles and habitual actions of leaders.  The first step is to model the behavior you’d like people to follow.
  
  
• Leaders are proactive, building and nurturing relationships, organizing the framework of organizations in line with clear missions, acquiring resources, and in general, empowering organizations to take advantage of opportunities.  Leaders experience fewer “emergencies” and tend to act upon rather than being acted upon.
  
  

• Great leaders build courage in their teammates by demonstrating trust.  Trust comes from demonstrating trustworthiness and also by building and maintaining an atmosphere of trust.  Power, confidence, nor wealth build courage.

• Great leaders, being publicly and internally accountable, never push the responsibility of failure onto others, even when others fail.  Great leaders know that, by doing this, they empower themselves to ask for, create, and help institute solutions.

• Great leaders use the fear within as a measure of their courage and take the next step anyway.

• Leadership is not a matter of time. It’s a matter of sharing and serving people until they find you trustworthy and they trust you.

Some basic characteristics of leaders are...

• Emotional Stability
• Dominance
• Enthusiasm
• Conscientiousness
• Social Boldness
• Tough-mindedness
• Self-assurance
• Compulsiveness
• High Energy
• Intuitiveness
• Maturity
• Team Orientation
• Empathy
• Charisma