Jeffrey Gandz is Professor, Managing Director, Program Design, Executive Development, and Program Director, Ivey Executive Program, Ivey Leadership Program, Richard Ivey School of Business
Look into the soul of any great leader and you will find a good leader. But, if only that were the case. Some leaders, those who crave and bathe in the spotlight, are in fact not so great. Others, who are highly effective (and modest) and possess the five key characteristics this author describes, are good leaders first and foremost. Which is what, in the end, makes them great.
The extraordinarily successful book From Good to Greati focused attention on the kind of leadership that was required to achieve enduring high performance. While it has been one of the best-selling management books of all time, it tends to focus on the effectiveness dimension of leadership to the virtual exclusion of other important dimensions. In my view, you cannot have truly great leadership without considering the broader challenges that face organizational leaders today. Great leadership must be good leadership too. The word "good" is an interesting word in the English language because of the many meanings that it has. No more so is this true than when it is used in conjunction with the words "leader" or "leadership." Good leadership can, indeed refer to effective leadership ? getting followers to pursue and attain goals. But it can also refer to the purpose or goals that leaders pursue and whether those are deemed fitting by the societies within which they operate; it can refer to the ethics of leaders ? doing the right things in the right ways. It can also refer to the ways in which leaders make followers feel good and, indeed, the way they feel about themselves as leaders.
Good as effective
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