We praise and admire the practice of leadership.  We seek out leaders and appreciate being part of a culture, organization or other group where positive and effective leadership is evident.

Yet, exactly what makes us admire and praise someone for demonstrating leadership.  Specifically what measure is used, objective, subjective or a combination.

In the case of subjective measures is there not a risk of judgemental error? That is we might classify someone as a strong and effective leader only to find out later, they really are not.

Objective Measures

Purely objective measures could provide greater confidence in our assessment of a leaders greatness.   The question remains, what are these things and how do we measure them?

I urge you to try an experiment to help answer this question.  Take some time and list the five greatest leaders you know.  There are no restrictions on this.

That is, organizational or granted power (e.g., a police chief) should not be considered.   List five leaders because you believe them to meet your definition of a leader and they stand out within the hundreds of people you might consider to be leaders.

That is, create a short list.  The next step is to write beside each name a brief explanation of the thing that makes them a great  leader and your qualification (measure) of why it is great.

I have asked many friends acquaintances and past colleagues to do this.  The result is always the same.  The selected leaders were the cause or catylst of  some accomplishment which was viewed by their selector as significant.  The measures and exact rationale for the significance varied widely.

Does anyone really know what constitutesa great leader?