The Eighth Wonder of the World

It could be added as the Eighth Wonder of the World: leadership. It is something that is better seen and felt than defined and said. John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States, said it best, “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”

I’ve been on a quest to discover some of the fundamental truths about leadership. Over the last year, I have had the privilege to speak with and interview dozens of leaders around the world — people in high places, people with tough jobs, people with global roles, people with local roles — from the president of a sovereign nation to global Fortune 500 CEOs to the richest man in the world. I’ve thought about what they’ve said and I’ve compared their insights with what I’ve learned in my own life.

Great leaders, at least the ones I’ve talked to, don’t agree on everything, but they seem to agree on some things.

First and foremost, leadership starts with the inner being of the leader, and is reflected and disseminated through words, actions and passion. It’s built on honesty, humility and integrity, and it ends with taking personal accountability for failure and team recognition for success. It’s built on long hours of work, attention to details, a relentless and insatiably competitive spirit and good decision making. That kind of leadership can’t be faked.

In my experience, leaders who are selfish usually fail, at least in the long run. And yet, if leaders are selfless, they may fail too. That’s because failure, like the “dawn’s early light” (to put it in poetic terms) is inevitable. It cannot be dispensed with. Leadership recognizes failure but realizes that failure is not defined in the moment, but rather by what the leader does after the failure occurs. In its essence, leadership comes with a special type of inner serenity, one that reconciles failure with success and recognizes that the two are inextricably linked. Failures are fatal only when a leader fails to learn from them.

Leadership is much less about the leader, much more about the followers and the mission. It’s about having individuals look into your eyes and see who you really are; it’s about letting them see into your soul. More than charisma, real leadership is about being authentic, which is a trait that endures. Leadership is also about compassion and the genuine development of the people you are leading. It is about helping people feel sufficient common purpose that they are able to achieve extraordinary things.

Though I’ve traveled the world interviewing leaders, I’ve learned that leadership is in many ways as simple as the lesson my father (and probably your father, too) taught: actions speak louder than words.

Consider a leader off the beaten track — John McKissick, the football coach at Summerville High School in Summerville, S.C. He is America’s all-time winning football coach. As of the end of the 2009 football season, Coach McKissick had amassed an incredible tally of 576 victories — far more than any other coach at the high school, college or professional level.

What’s McKissick view of how he scored all those victories? “Coaches never win games; players never lose games,” is what he said. His point is simple, poignant and humble. Winning is not about the leader. It is about the team, and the leader’s role is to always make it so.

McKissick may have won more than 500 games, but he lost a lot of games too. He built his record not on communicating a silver lining to go with the losses, but on creating a vision compelling enough, and values strong enough, to push his teams ahead after they lost. As a leader, McKissick is not simply a messenger of the team’s strategy. He is the message.

Leaders are mirrors for the entire organization. If he or she is pessimistic, the organization will succumb to mediocrity. Many leaders told me this. If the leader reflects brightness and light, the organization will also shine. Leadership is making certain that after every conversation with an employee, that employee feels better and more capable and more willing to stretch than before the conversation began.

I’ve learned in my conversations with leaders from around the world that real leadership is never about power but the restraint of power. It is about self-discipline and about rising above the immediate. The real leaders I’ve met are about standing for something far bigger than themselves.

This issue of Briefings combines leadership with the real-world arts. It examines the leadership style of Mexico’s Carlos Slim — traits that made him the world’s richest man — and delves down deeper to try and understand how he thinks. In this issue, we also look at how Vineet Nayar, one of India’s most talented business leaders, is turning his company, HCL, upside down.

This issue, which is our most global yet, also looks at whether China will continue on its rapid growth course, whether the euro will hold together despite the strains, and how companies can gain greater market share in the emerging world by focusing on price. It also takes a look at the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, to see how that crisis could — and should — have been managed.

This issue of Briefings also widens horizons by looking at the biology of leadership and examining how the brain itself works, and how it is wired. And, it looks at the science behind a little start-up that is making big advances in stem cell research. The articles in this issue are global, thoughtful and thought provoking — traits every leader must have.

But leadership is not just about thinking lofty thoughts. Leaders must be grounded too. They must separate what they do from who they are, all the while keeping their heroic aspirations and recognizing that leadership, like life, is a journey.