Effective leaders have comprehensive understanding of people, organizations, and themselves in order to empower others. They actively listen to understand speakers fully and gain insights into perspectives, strengths, and weaknesses. Leaders solicit diverse viewpoints to improve organizational understanding and buy-in. They help people see their potential and focus on strengths rather than faults through loving, optimistic speech and actions that validate their message. By developing understanding and empowering others, leaders bridge reality and potential.

1. Comprehensive Understanding, Empowering Presence
Effective leaders have comprehensive understanding and enter each dynamic with a presence
that empowers. In terms of their comprehensive understanding, they cultivate their minds to
critically examine each dynamic at hand. In terms of an empowering presence, they help their
group recognize that life could be better, and they facilitate the individual and organizational
approximation of that. All of these qualities are nurtured by virtuous temperament. Ultimately,
strong leaders cultivate a pathway for the ascension of a community.
Comprehensive Understanding
It is critical for leaders to intimately identify with the audience that they lead. On an individual
level, effective leaders have a strong understanding of people and interpersonal dynamics. When
listening to a person speak, they diligently pay attention to what is explicitly stated as well as
how it is communicated. They are very active listeners; they do not focus on their response to
the speaker, but instead focus on trying to fully understand the speaker (Pittinsky, 2009). A
person’s verbal syntax gives insight into the way that that individual structures their
understanding of the world around him or her. A person’s diction indicates his or her contextual
understanding or feelings regarding the topic of discussion. Their vocal intonation is a strong
indicator of their underlying sentiments. Microexpressions are also strong cues for how the
speaker consciously or subconsciously feels. Taking note of all of these factors enables a leader
to have a more complete understanding of the speaker. From here, the leader can better interpret
the speaker’s explicit communication. By having such a critical eye, a leader can better
understand the authenticity, confidence, and motives of any speaker. From there, the leader can
utilize that understanding in order to best direct that individual or the collective organization in a
manner which promotes the organizational mission.
On a broader spectrum, effective leaders must have a comprehensive understanding of
organizations and relationships. Instead of taking a domineering position, leaders of the most
effective organizations develop integrative models of interaction in their leadership (Logan et al.,
2008). They enable various stakeholders to partake in identifying problems and prescribing
solutions. This affirms each stakeholder as it encourages the unique, creative insights that each
stakeholder could potentially provide. Additionally, this process broadens the personal
perspective of each stakeholder. It encourages each stakeholder to minimize their emphasis on
individual or subordinate group differences and instead focus on promoting the superordinate
group agenda (Pittinsky, 2009). By soliciting various viewpoints, this process yields a more
comprehensive understanding of the organization’s strengths and weaknesses, and it creates
more remedial buy-in amongst participants. This improves the viability of their agenda.
Lastly, a leader must have a comprehensive understanding of his or her self. As others have
strengths and weaknesses, and organizations have strengths and weaknesses, leaders themselves
also have strengths and weaknesses. Despite the fact that the leader has a prominent position and
power, the leader cannot allow this to get to his head. Humility allows growth where pride does
not. The most effective leaders have a concerted, disciplined dedication to cultivate virtue and
improve their selves (Kellerman, 2010; Riggio et al., 2010). This dedication provides them a

2. pathway to maximize their potential. This dedication also lends them towards the temperate
conduct that guards them from overextending themselves or their organization.
Aside from this comprehensive understanding of interpersonal dynamics, group dynamics, and
self, effective leaders maintain a presence that empowers those whom they interact with.
Presence That Empowers
An effective leader helps people to see that life can be better than it is currently perceived. As a
foundation for this, the most effective leaders have strong and inspiring relationships with the
people or organizations that they interact with (Logan et al., 2008). Love, patience, diligence,
and other principal virtues facilitate this. They cultivate the insight that enables a leader to
intimately identify with his or her audience. Virtue also engenders the authenticity that is
required for people to trust their leader’s actions and words.
Principally, an effective leader must act and speak with love. Interpersonally, this means that the
leader must be able to recognize the frailness of humanity and nevertheless value each
individual’s potential instead of focusing on their faults. Focusing on an individual’s potential
enables the leader to help that individual focus on and more-effectively utilize their strengths.
This focus, explicitly or indirectly communicated, minimizes the relative significance and barrier
created by that individual’s weaknesses. The most skilled leaders will be able to frame
weaknesses as a temporary roadblock and furthermore highlight a pathway of action that may
resolve them. To the extent that weaknesses are elucidated, a leader should do so in a loving
manner that does not allow that weakness define the individual. It is arrogant to chide a person
for a weakness or failure and condemn them as though they are incapable of growth. An
effective leader will articulate what he or she wants to say to an individual in a manner that is
sympathetic of how it may be received. A loving leader will open an individual’s mind to the
opportunity for recourse or a greater understanding that ultimately promotes individual and
organizational growth (Logan et al., 2008). By speaking and acting out of love, the leader
empowers those whom he or she interacts with.
In order to effectively motivate people towards any action or perspective, the leader must have
strong mastery over language and communication. Speech and perspective are intricately
related. By adjusting language, such as by speaking and orientating an organization towards
more loving and optimistic speech, leaders have the capacity to fundamentally change
organizational behavior (Logan et al., 2008). This will lend them towards the “we are great” or
“life is great” mentality that is required for maximal organizational success (Logan et al., 2008).
If a leader speaks from a place of humility and love, in contrast with pride and arrogance, that
leader will have the best opportunity to communicate with an individual in a way that does not
appear aggressive or otherwise excessively negative. Furthermore, the leader must have enough
patience to endure any negative reactions of that individual. A comprehensive understanding of
the individual will help the leader select his words and conduct in a manner that will be least
likely to stir up anger or resistance. If that fails, however, the leader must maintain pure
intentions and remain focused on the organizational mission. Only from there can the leader
have the opportunity to redirect individuals in a positive direction. Ultimately, a leader’s
command of language serves not only to mitigate misunderstanding, but furthermore helps him

3. or her speak with others in a manner that empowers them and their potential to promote the
organizational mission.
A leader’s actions must validate his or her words. If the leader desires for his or her subordinates
to be loving, open-minded, and diligent, the leader must do likewise. Otherwise, the leader’s
words are considered inauthentic, and the leader is perceived as untrustworthy. If a leader
desires to promote a principle or idea, it is not sufficient to only have external things that
communicate or represent it; these can be construed as done just for show (Pittinsky, 2009).
Instead, the leader needs to fully embody it and incorporate or reflect it in everything that he or
she does. The principle or idea needs to be as self-evident as possible. That way, people could
look at it credibly and furthermore believe in that principle or idea which the leader has
prescribed. Only that way, the leader’s words and presence gains power. This defines diligent
and authentic leadership, which inspires others to behave likewise. As this conduct is replicated
by employees of the organization, it engenders trust amongst associates and all the people whom
they interact with outside the organization. With their culture of authenticity and diligence, this
cohort will have strong of influence on people; they gain power to better approximate their goals.
By developing comprehensive understanding and maintaining a presence that empowers, leaders
create bridges between reality and potential. It requires an optimistic mind such as theirs to fully
recognize these opportunities as they arise. Virtue additionally cultivates these strengths.
Effective leaders enhance the way that people view themselves, their organization, and their
collective potential to impact the larger society.

4. References
Kellerman, B. (2010). Leadership: Essential selections on power, authority, and influence.
McGraw Hill Professional.
Logan, D., King, J., & Fischer-Wright, H. (2008). Tribal leadership. Collins.
Pittinsky, T. L. (Ed.). (2009). Crossing the divide: Intergroup leadership in a world of
difference. Harvard Business Press.
Riggio, R. E., Zhu, W., Reina, C., & Maroosis, J. A. (2010). Virtue-based measurement of
ethical leadership: The Leadership Virtues Questionnaire. Consulting Psychology Journal:
Practice and Research, 62(4), 235.