Leadership - my take on it.

I think the topic I have picked up is sensitive, but it is something that all of us experience in our day to day lives. Theodore Roosevelt once said "The best leader is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it."
Simply put, to me essentials of a leader are that he should know what are his team's capabilities and what can be expected out of them. He has to decide how to construct a bridge between what is required and what is being delivered,while making sure that the transition is ever so smooth.
"To lead people, walk beside them … As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear; and the next, the people hate … When the best leader’s work is done the people say, ‘We did it ourselves!"
I do not think that one can be a great leader if he doesn't understand the pulse of his men/team. Only when he blends in with the team, will he be able to analyze the qualities of each person and understand how best to utilize a person's capabilities to the best of his abilities. If a leader thinks that by inducing fear in the minds of his men he will be able to get them to work, I think he would have done enough to dig his own grave.
The leaders who work most effectively, never say “I.” And that’s not because they have trained themselves not to say “I.” They don’t think “I.” They think “we”; they think “team.” They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don’t sidestep it, but “we” gets the credit…. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done. I think leadership comes from integrity – that you do whatever you ask others to do. I think there are non-obvious ways to lead. Just by providing a good example as a parent, a friend, a neighbor makes it possible for other people to see better ways to do things. Leadership does not need to be a dramatic, fist in the air and trumpets blaring, activity. The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it.
A famous saying goes, "The greater a man is in power above others, the more he ought to excel them in virtue. None ought to govern who is not better than the governed."