"The water you touch in the river is the last of that which has passed and the first of that
which is coming."
-Leonardo da Vinci

True leadership is not about reaching the top. It's not even about being at the top. True leadership is all about recognising how long one must be at the top. True leadership is all about that near impossible, yet magnanimous ability to say "when".

As one casts an eye over the CEOscape both in India and abroad, one is pained in parts to see the "cling syndrome" of leadership-the inability to recognise when personal profit must humbly bow before young talent. Success happens only when talent meets opportunity. And very often, looking at a group of talented people, one must see who's leading the group. The leader, after all, is the one who gives the group the opportunity to prove its talent.

The life one leads is not the legacy one leaves. That's a very average interpretation of leadership. It's actually the legacy one leaves that is a true reflection of the life one leads. And the sooner one leaves that legacy, the better the life led.

Leadership is not about writing a book and leaving it for someone to read and then leather-bind it for the library of posterity. Leadership is about co-authoring 14 out of the 15 chapters of the book, then choosing five great colleagues to help find that incredible ending. The best ending is the one that shows others a new beginning.

In reality, most leadership is pathetically self-centred. It is typically, "here I am" rather than "there you are". In that baton that most leaders grudgingly wish to pass on, lie the insecurities of leadership-greed, and the inability to confront the most basic dichotomy that leadership is not about running companies or even about the job title the leader held. It is about the job titles that the people he led, now hold.

General Electric is often referred to as a 'University of CEO Graduates'. When Jeff Immelt got the top job, an industry count revealed that 19 other colleagues of his went off to become CEOs in other companies-an incredible succession plan that had 20 potential successors. That's leadership.

Uneasy must lie the head that wears the crown, but in most cases, 'smug' lies the head that wears the crown. Smug in the realisation that it can wear the crown till whenever it wishes, and in the false notion that the leader's shoe size is the only right one and, therefore, until he finds someone with the same size, he needn't put his feet up. Almost the way George Burns felt when he approached 100. He said, "I can't die, I am booked."

But true leadership is about complete uneasiness in the chair that the leader occupies. It is about quickly seeking redundancy. Great leaders consistently worry about how soon can they make themselves redundant so that they can stand at the sidelines and applaud the next leader.