An ability to identify feasible solutions in a maze of externalities that influence their microcosm is a hallmark of good managers. Leaders tend to do this more consistently, with an uncanny ability to envision goals, and then navigate their organisations and people through uncharted waters to achieve the end destination. The leadership mantra has five verses: power of vision, clarity of purpose, passion to create, an ability to carry an organisation as a cohesive unit and the foresight to incubate growth drivers.

A leader is characterised by the ability to look beyond the obvious and articulate a future goal-one milestone at a time-for his team, and in the process empower them with a deep sense of purpose. Few things provide higher satisfaction to individuals and organisations than a clear sense of purpose. If you can leverage this sense of purpose to ignite the minds of your teams with a burning desire to perform and create, you would have set yourself on a path to success. A path that binds as much as it liberates. Organisations prosper in an environment where the freedom of an individual to perform and achieve is a core around which collective growth is built. Leaders recognise this and foster a sense of positive community between the achievers and worker ants.

Unilateral decisions are passé in today's business environment; it is therefore critical to identify, incubate and empower a team of drivers in an organisation. All leaders invest in efforts to create micro leaders that feed them with actionable insights at functional, tactical and strategic levels, always keeping them a step ahead of the vagaries that influence their ecosystem.

Leadership is more about continuity than about seeing the future. Able leaders envision and create self-sustaining entities whose survival is delinked from their presence.