In John McCain's most recent attack ad "The One," he closes with the question: "He may be the one, but is he ready to lead?"
So let's take a moment to answer that question.
Here's how 12 fairly influential folks from a variety of backgrounds and eras have defined leadership. Go ahead and score it yourself to see who best passes this Leadership Test. Give 1 point to a candidate if you can honestly answer that the statement is mostly true about him. Report your final score in a comment.
The Leadership Test
- A leader is a dealer in hope. Napoleon Bonaparte
- Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence. Albert Einstein
- There's nothing more demoralizing than a leader who can't clearly articulate why we're doing what we're doing. James Kouzes and Barry Posner
- Most important, leaders can conceive and articulate goals that lift people out of their petty preoccupations and unite them in pursuit of objectives worthy of their best efforts. John Gardner
- If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader. John Quincy Adams
- A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be. Rosalynn Carter
- The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision. Theodore Hesburgh
- The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on. Walter Lippman
- "All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership." John Kenneth Galbraith
- "Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand." General Colin Powell
- "My own definition of leadership is this: The capacity and the will to rally men and women to a common purpose and the character which inspires confidence." General Montgomery
- "Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be." Ralph Waldo Emerson