What is leadership?

Leaders are responsible for future leadership. They need to identify, develop, and nurture future leaders. Leaders are responsible for such things as a sense of quality in the institution, for whether or not the institution is open to change. Effective leaders encourage contrary opinions, an important source of vitality. I am talking about how leaders can nurture the roots of an institution, about a sense of continuity, about institution culture.

Leaders owe a covenant to the corporation or institution, which is , after all, a group of people. Leaders owe the organization a new reference point for what caring, purposeful, committed people can be in institutional setting. Notice, I did not say what people can do - what we can do is merely a consequence of what we can be.

Source: Max Depree
http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1182552