Maybe Integrity Is Most Important

You know what?  Maybe it’s integrity that’s the most important leadership characteristic.

Yes, definitely, integrity has to be the most important leadership characteristic. How could it not be?

Isn’t integrity the most critical of all leadership values? A great leader must have integrity.

Someone who adheres to moral and ethical principles. A person with sound moral character.  An honest person.

All of this sounds great – a leader who is honest, with sound moral character. A perfect person. This makes a great leader.

Waaaaait a minnnnnute.  Who knows anyone who is perfect?

Leadership Vision Leader Trust

Okay, so if trust is the most important great leader characteristic, where does vision fall?

Well, as crazy, and contradictory as this is going to sound, vision is actually the most important.  What the?  Exactly.

Vision is the reason we wake up in the morning.  Vision is the reason we wake up in the middle of the night.  Vision is the reason we can’t fall asleep. Vision is what makes us do ordinary things in an extra-ordinary fashion.

Vision is a view of the future that is better than the current view.

Not talking vision statement here.  Heck, no one knows that it is anyway.  Seriously.  No one does.  And if anyone does, it’s someone who wrote it – and by now they’re probably retired or dead.  But no one else. (I’ll call your bluff on this one if you really want to disagree)

This is what makes leaders great.  A vision for the future that is better than the current vision.

A vision that is lofty, hard to articulate and you may not say it the same way twice.  A vision that is impossible.

A vision is more important than trust.