Leaders are people with one essential characteristic – followers. They are known not by their status, or their skills or by even their noble intention, but by their fruit. Leaders do not exist without followers. Theirs is a social calling; skilled and masterful to be sure, but essentially human, more particularly, leaders are persons for they are leaders of people. Their power, if that term is even applicable, comes not from what they can command, but from what they engender in others. Leaders are therefore preoccupied with “othering”, that evident propensity to be about the “other” rather than the “self”. Through this choice, they foster both economic leverage and social cohesion. Leaders make, by their example, the social system of the business work. They are its glue and so the architects of its future – whether glorious or ignominious. As go the leaders, so goes the business.
