In a general sense, leadership is about people creating opportunities to develop skills that will positively impact the lives of everyone. Leadership skills are used everyday, by everyone, at our workplaces, with our families, in our communities.

When you think about it, leadership skills constantly need improvement. To succeed. To help others. To create a better world for all of us. Creating opportunities for you and others. To learn about, teach, and practice leadership skills. Exchanging ideas, participating, and contributing. Connecting with peers,
professionals, and mentors. To share information, knowledge, and experience. Creating an impact. Today and in the future.

The prime objective of effective leadership for for-profit businesses is to improve the business results of the company. Effective leadership creates business value. In today�s economy, customers prize value. They will pay for value. They will not pay for any action or activity that contributes to overhead without contributing to value. If you cannot justify your overhead to your customer, they will not buy. That is their right, just as it is the business leader's obligation to eliminate those actions that contribute to waste�the opposite of value. Effective leaders create more satisfied employees; satisfied employees create more satisfied customers; and satisfied, loyal customers create higher profits. Effective leadership helps retention of high-impact employees. In good economic times, many organizations find themselves fighting a war for talent to keep their key, highly talented people from leaving to pursue new opportunities in other companies.

Every day provides more experience with real people and real situations that provide you with opportunities to improve your skills. The value that effective leaders have the capacity to contribute to a company improves their career too.

As you build your leadership talents and resources, you increase your capacity to provide value to organizations within your community or region. Both companies and communities are energized by the leadership of committed individuals who go beyond typical thinking, are able to understand issues and challenges at the strategic level, and can take action to do the things that most need doing.

“[The] future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented� The first step of the technological or social inventor is to visualize by an act of the imagination a thing or state of things which does not yet exist� He [or She] can then start rationally arguing backward from the invention and forward from the means at his [or her] disposal until a way is found from one to the other."
~ Dennis Gabor, Inventing the Future (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964)