Every successful leader must articulate a clear vision in a way that everyone in the corporation understands. But that’s just the start.
Integrity and candor in dealing with your management team, employees, and investors, together with treating customers and your community fairly and with that same degree of integrity, is to me the real key to leadership. There is little need to take credit for success. It will flow naturally if it’s really earned.
That was a key take-away message from my years at the Harvard Business School. Unfortunately, I feel its importance has been diluted in recent years, as too much emphasis is placed on “creating shareholder value” as the principal measure of a successful leader.