True leadership is recession-proof. It is eternal and without qualification. And what was true in the past is true today and will always be: Time reveals true leaders and exposes false ones.

Henry S. Givray

SIX UNDERLYING TENETS

Leadership is the uniquely consistent and defining force behind great, enduringly successful organizations. All of the best strategies, creative ideas, and brilliant game plans cannot succeed or be sustained without strong, effective leadership.

Regardless of title, position, status or power, leadership can’t be bought, controlled, grabbed or bestowed. Leadership is invited and can only be given willingly by others.

No detailed blueprints or explicit instructions exist on how to become a true leader, only foundational principles, eternal concepts, and essential competencies and practices. Learning and successfully applying them require unwavering dedication to a continuous lifecycle of learning, growing, and changing.

Leadership is the most powerful human force and is accessible to anyone regardless of position, title, profession, or circumstances. And it is relevant in all contexts of professional and personal life.

Our innate wiring can play a role in our ability to earn leadership’s invitation and deliver on its promise. But our inherited talents and attributes are neither guarantees nor inhibitors in our ultimate success.

Leadership’s underlying principles are timeless and without limitation regardless of important and necessary changes in societal needs, expectations, requirements, and norms. True leaders, however, continuously learn, consciously adapt, and competently apply such principles in the context of an evolving and changing world in order to meet the true needs of others, ensure vitality in the organizations they serve, make a positive and lasting difference in their communities, and build foundations of opportunity and enlightenment for future generations.