Operating on the leading edge and achieving career aspirations have propelled many savvy workers into roles with important titles—Director, VP, even CEO. To the world at large, these folks have accomplished something big. They run companies, have teams of people reporting to them, and make impressive salaries. They're leaders. They, indeed, have been designated to lead projects, people, or both, and many of them push through the challenges they encounter each day rather adeptly. No one may even know that they go home each night questioning what they've done and how they've done it... whether they've had the kind of impact on people they'd hoped for... and if their influence was clear enough, certain enough, to truly make a difference. In fact it is only the leader who reflects on how she or he impacts others and bears responsibility to the team that opens the gateway to true leadership.

True leadership, the way I teach and mirror it to clients, requests that the leader recognize that the standards for them are different. Every interaction counts and represents the culture you, as leader, are shaping with each behavior, word, and manner in which you treat someone. As David S. Pottruck and Terry Pearce state in their best-selling book, Clicks and Mortar, "When you are in the spotlight, everyone can see you, and it places a special responsibility on you to act in a way that is admirable. ...Being a role model is part of the price of taking on the mantle of leadership. [Your] standards have to be impeccable because every gesture [you] make is open to interpretation."

Part of acknowledging a leadership standard means you know your capabilities and inadequacies intimately. A true leader will look at these inadequacies (usually with the help of a business consultant or executive coach) with an eye towards transforming them into viable resources. An example I often encounter working with executives is that they are talented and brilliant in one, two, or several components of leadership, such as imagining and harvesting new ideas, negotiating with potential partners, persisting in the face of unexpected crises, and directing the corporate vision. What they sometimes lack or have left unexplored are the subtleties of maturing themselves-and being able to do the same for their people. This includes the following:

• knowing how to make oneself "approachable"
• creating "safety" for people to offer suggestions and/or disagree
• being "emotionally available" when people react (cry, yell, withdraw, or blame)
• the ability to articulate specifically how you "connect well" with people and the capacity to teach it to others