As us army general George Patton once said, "Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity", leaders must realise that in order to get expected results out of a team, they must learn to give operational freedom to responsible team members. The main challenge of a leader lies in identifying responsible individuals, delegating tasks to them and empowering them to do the right thing their own way.

Leaders must realise that as they promote people to higher positions, it is not the people but their achievements that they recognise and felicitate. And it is this recognition that is the indicator of how much an employee can be trusted with the task at hand.

Control is not leadership. Neither is management. The ability to help people discover how far they can go and how high they can reach, is true leadership.

There are three golden rules leaders must follow. First, always give credit for a task well done. Being generous with praise ensures that leaders keep in mind that it is the team's and not individual effort that reaps success. Second, be courteous and have genuine consideration for other people's feelings. And last but not the least, have foresight and prudence. The moment leaders lose foresight, they start reacting to events around them, and that in turn leads the organisation to lose focus as well.

Apart from all this, the most important attribute of a good leader is humility. All leaders must know that even the best of us will only become better by learning from others, be it superior or subordinate.