One of the most over-used words in the business, executive, political, athletic and entertainment fields is the word leadership. In this blog I’m going to focus strictly on leadership in its relationship to business executives.

This term and all kinds of other jargon related to it are tossed around with the greatest sense of abandon by many executives in business today. The use of the word in this “pejorative” context has almost become a synonym for a self-congratulatory statement by these individuals. The term itself is now so ubiquitous as to become almost meaningless. In this and other blogs I’m going to try to break down a more effective definition of leadership in the business context.

Today we’re going to examine one aspect of actual leadership. This aspect of leadership involves the ability to accept and implement high quality advice as a key aspect of effective leadership. While many if not all business executives seek out advice and are given opinions and information and data about their companies every day, it’s surprising how many of these executives are reluctant to act on that information when it is contrary to what they want to do in any given business decision-making situation.

More likely than not these leaders will express gratitude for the high quality advice of their company’s executives , business colleagues, other professionals, family members and other business people – but will ultimately reject most of it and make decisions based on what they feel is best for their company and themselves at any given moment. Nothing wrong with aggressive, forceful, determined, professional decision making but what is a problem is when executives refuse to acknowledge the opinions, advice and counsel of those who may have a better angle and vision on the issues and problems of a given business than the leader him or herself.

So one quality of the effective progressive leader is to accept the wisdom, advice, counsel, input and data of qualified others.