Rule #3: Leadership Is Confusing As Hell

10. Leaders understand the ultimate power of relationships. Here's a mind-blowing proposition: War -- or business on a wartime footing -- is fundamentally a woman's game! Why? Because when everything's on the line, what really matters are the relationships that leaders have created with their people. I recall a Douglas MacArthur biographer who claimed that the one piece of advice that MacArthur most valued (which was passed on to him by one of his military forbearers) was "Never give an order that can't be obeyed." But women already know that. They tend to understand the primacy of massive IIR (investment in relationships), which is one reason why the premier untapped leadership talent in the world today rests with women!

11. Leaders multitask. Which element is in the shortest supply today -- and tomorrow and tomorrow? Time. The future belongs to the leader who can juggle a dozen conundrums at once. And who is he? I mean she? I just glanced at a lovely book called Selling Is a Woman's Game: 15 Powerful Reasons Why Women Can Outsell Men (Avon Books, 1994), by Nicki Joy and Susan Kane-Benson. Take this quick quiz, the authors urge: Who manages more things at once? Who usually takes care of the details? Who finds it easier to meet new people? Who asks more questions in a conversation? Who is a better listener? Who encourages harmony and agreement? Who works with a longer to-do list? Who's better at keeping in touch with others? Now that's what I call multitasking! And again: Let's hear it for women leaders!

12. Leaders groove on ambiguity. Message 2001: Wall Street is nuttier than a fruitcake! All of that stuff they teach us in Economics 101 about rational expectations? In the past year, we've seen those "rational" boys and girls of Wall Street fall in and out of love with whole sectors of the economy the way teenagers with overactive hormones swoon and dive over movie stars. But when Wall Streeters do it, real leaders in real companies feel real effects.

The next five years are going to be an economic roller-coaster ride. That means that business leaders are going to be challenged repeatedly not just to make fact-based decisions, but also to make some sense out of all of the conflicting and hard-to-detect signals that come through the fog and the noise. Leaders are the ones who can handle gobs and gobs of ambiguity.

13. Leaders wire the joint. The good-old-boy's network provided a direct way of operating: I'm a vice president, you're a vice president. I want your order, I call you up, I take you out for a drink or a game of golf, and, man to man, I get your order.

It doesn't work like that anymore -- not when power is diffuse, alliances are ever changing, and decision-making channels are fluid, indirect, and muddy. The game today: Soft-wire the whole joint. The way to make the sale today -- or to have influence on any high-impact decision -- is to build, nurture, and mobilize a vast network of key influencers at every level and in every function of the operation.

14. Leadership is an improvisational art. The game -- hey, the basic rule book -- keeps changing. Competition keeps changing. So leaders need to change, to keep reinventing themselves. Leaders have to be ready to adapt, to move, to forget yesterday, to forgive, and to structure new roles and new relationships for themselves, their teams, and their ever-shifting portfolio of partners.

15. Leaders trust their guts. "Intuition" is one of those good words that has gotten a bad rap. For some reason, intuition has become a "soft" notion. Garbage! Intuition is the new physics. It's an Einsteinian, seven-sense, practical way to make tough decisions. Bottom line, circa 2001 to 2010: The crazier the times are, the more important it is for leaders to develop and to trust their intuition.

16. Leaders trust trust. My longtime business partner Jim Kouzes and his colleague Barry Posner nailed it with a one-word title to their recent book: Credibility (How Leaders Gain and Lose it, Why People Demand It, Jossey Bass Publishers, 1993). In a world gone nuts, we cry out for something or someone to rely on. To trust. The fearless leader may (make that, had better) change his or her mind with the times. But as a subordinate, I trust a leader who shows up, makes the tough calls, takes the heat, sleeps well amidst the furor, and then aggressively chomps into the next task in the morning with visible vitality.

17. Leaders are natural empowerment freaks. There are two ways to look at Jack Welch's legacy as a leader. The first is to say that he has created more value for his shareholders than any other comparable modern-day business leader. Which he has. He has also created more leaders than any comparable modern-day business leader.