Leadership is creating and sustaining positive change by working with and through others.

From this come the critical elements of highest level leadership:  1) Change is inspired and has to be sustained (deduct points if it can’t be duplicated or continued); 2) Negative leaders inspire terrorism or hatred but these are not, in my mind, working at the highest level; 3) Any leader’s own actions are far less impactful than the coordinated efforts of those with whom he/she works — the leader’s key role is to galvanize and align others to work with common focus. Weaker leaders try to do it all themselves, not trusting others.