Think about the following short list of people who could be considered great leaders in history.  People who were effective by my working definition of effective leadership: “An effective leader is someone who has followers and gets them, through his/her leadership, to accomplish something.  The more followers they have and/or the greater the accomplishment; the more effective the leader.”  Some of these are more moral than others but we’ll leave out the completely immoral examples.  Here’s the list:

• Martin Luther King Jr
• Walt Disney
• Bill Gates
• Winston Churchill
• Nelson Mandela
• Martin Luther
• Pope John Paul II
• Harriet Tubman
• Mother Teresa
• William Wilberforce
• Joan of Arc

Now I could list a ton more people in every context.  Religious, business, countries and causes.  This is just a few that came to mind right away that I think most people would say had a huge impact.  They had lots of followers and accomplished real change in their context.

Obviously most of us, or more accurately probably none of us, will be on any future list like this.  But I think we can learn something here about leadership from these folks.  What do they have in common?  What made them effective leaders?

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