With energetic, global competition the order of the day, you need to get the most from the people you work with. But motivating people and getting people to follow you is easier said than done.

Leadership is more than just creating a vision and pursuing it with passion. It is more than doing whatever it takes to get the people around you to bring your vision to life. Forget all the empowerment and new age stuff. Good leadership means getting back to the basics and take charge.

One of the most important requirements of a leader is knowing what you expect of yourself and of those you are leading. You have to know your strengths and your weaknesses. Know particularly what bothers people around you, what bugs people about you.

As a leader you have to be magnanimous. Share your power and your time. Leadership is not the accumulation and holding of power. Leadership is sharing that power, giving away that power, sharing your time with people, not holding that time for yourself.

Leaders identity, nurture, and protect the innovators. The innovators are very important in any organization. They are the people who are constantly coming up with new ideas. Finding the innovators, nurturing the innovators, protecting the innovators from their bad ideas, and protecting the organization from their bad ideas, are all very important for a leader to do. But most important of all is listening to and grabbing their good ideas and turning them into new initiatives.

A leader must be decisive. An unwritten rule that many successful leaders follow is, when they have 60 percent of the information they need to make a decision, they go ahead and make it. The 60 percent rule is very flexible. To make some decisions, you may need 80 percent of the information. In some cases, you may need 90 percent. But don