We don’t often think about it–let alone talk about it publicly–but sometimes the greatest act of leadership is one of self-removal from our own team or company. Sometimes we’re faced with the question, "Do I stay, or do I go?"

In this video clip from The Extreme Leadership Summit, former Kineticom CEO, Simon Billsberry, discusses how he made that very personal decision for himself.

It’s rare to see a successful entrepreneur and leader being so candid and honest about such a personal decision in so public a forum. I highly recommend that you take a few minutes to eavesdrop on this insightful conversation. Perhaps it’ll help bring some clarity to your own stay-or-go decisions:

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 Steve Farber, author of Greater Than Yourself: The Ultimate Lesson of True Leadership, the president of Extreme Leadership, is a leadership consultant and speaker, and the author of the national bestseller The Radical Leap, The Radical Edge, and the newly released The Radical Leap Re-Energized: Doing What You Love in the Service of People Who Love What You Do.

"Nobody sings solo," was our CEO Eddie Carlson’s favorite line when he was our leader at United Airlines and I was the group vice president of marketing.

On my office "wall of fame" are names of leaders and mentors with whom I’ve worked over the years. They taught me the importance of being disciplined and thinking strategically.

Some of those mentors include: Virgil and Mary Putnam, my parents on the Iowa farm; Jim Taylor, my high school principal and journalism instructor; Eddie Carlson, Chairman & CEO of United Airlines; Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan, the first and last men on the moon; General Paul Tibbets, Commander of the B-29 Enola Gay that dropped the bomb ending WWII; Zig Ziglar, the great motivational speaker and author; Phil Guthrie, CFO at Southwest Airlines and Braniff and my teammate in other ventures; Herb Kelleher, co-founder and Chairman of Southwest Airlines who hired me as CEO; and Krista, Mike and Sue Putnam, my wife, son and daughter who always seem to know when my GPS needs a course correction.

There is a common thread with all of them. They think strategically, speak candidly and I have counted on their support in both good and turbulent times.

In 1981 when I left my position as CEO of Southwest Airlines and became CEO of the financially challenged Braniff International, we flew a 747 with 300 passengers from Dallas-Fort Worth Airport down to Harlingen, Texas for the Commerative Air Force annual air show and fly-bys. They maintain a fleet of WWII aircraft, including "FiFi," which is the only remaining B-29 from the 3,000 that flew in WWII.

My reward was to fly on the mock bombing run in the nose position with General Tibbets as the pilot and commander of the flight. He was quiet, humble and a patriotic American. He shook my hand and said, "Thanks for trying to save Braniff." I thanked him for what he did. He simply smiled and said, "I just did my job."

General Tibbets is a great example of strategic discipline in turbulent times. Jim Collins and Morten Hansen in Great By Choice, HarperCollins, 2011, devoted a chapter of their best seller to Southwest Airlines for its ability to withstand the winds of turbulence for over thirty years. Their research concluded that Southwest still adheres to 80 percent of the vision we wrote in 1979. They call it SMaC for Specific, Methodical and Consistent.

We had a disciplined NO list: No more than one kind of airplane, No first class, No meals, No seat assignments, No interlining of tickets or luggage, No high fares. And we just stuck to the things we were doing well. We were not a traditional airline. We were in the business of mass transportation and we kept the focus on people and nurtured a feeling of family amongst the entire Southwest team.

We hired people based on their positive attitudes and then often developed their skills. Keeping it simple was the key to our success, and we vowed to be disciplined and stick to the vision and the flight plan we wrote that was just 52 words long.

Southwest has gone from 3 airplanes and 80 employees in 1971 to over 600 airplanes, 50,000 employees and 40 consecutive years of profitability. Strategic discipline works in good times and in turbulence. Do what you do best and stick to it.

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Howard Putnam speaks on leadership, change, transformation, customer service, teams and ethics. He is the former CEO of Southwest Airlines and the first CEO to take a major airline, Braniff International, into, through and out of Chapter 11, getting it flying again in less than two years.

Abraham Lincoln really was born in a log cabin. The fact that he went on to become President — and to lead the country through the most difficult period of its history — is truly remarkable. It’s even more amazing when you consider what it took to be an important leader in the middle of the nineteenth century. Although we hear a lot about people like Lincoln or Andrew Jackson or Ulysses S. Grant — people who came from nothing to wield great power — these were most definitely the exceptions who proved the rule. And the rule was, most successful people started out with all the advantages. Financially, it was much harder to get rich a hundred and fifty years ago than it is today — and if you failed, it was much harder to get back on your feet. There was no safety net from the government or from anywhere else to make sure that you didn’t go hungry. In those days, it was every man for himself.

With that in mind, let’s look for a minute at some of the things that Lincoln faced and overcame. You’ve probably seen lists similar to this, describing Lincoln’s failures, but I’d like to go through it again in order to make some important points, which we’ll take up immediately after the list. As you’re listening to this list, I’d like you also to think of setbacks you’ve faced in your own life, and how you responded to them.

In 1832, Lincoln was working in a general store in Illinois when he decided to run for the state legislature. But the election was some months away, and before it took place the general store went bankrupt and Lincoln was out of a job. So he joined the army and served three months. When he got out, it was almost time for the election — which he lost.

Then, with a partner, Lincoln opened a new general store. His partner embezzled from the business, and the store went broke. And shortly thereafter the partner died, leaving Lincoln with debts that took several years to pay off.

In 1834, Lincoln ran again for the state legislature, and this time he won. He was even elected to three more terms of two years each. During this period, however, Lincoln also suffered some severe emotional problems. Today he would have been categorized as clinically depressed.

By 1836, Lincoln had become a licensed attorney. At that time, a law degree was not required to pass the bar exam, and Lincoln had been studying on his own for years. He later became a circuit-riding lawyer, traveling from county to county in Illinois to plead cases in different jurisdictions. He was one of the most diligent of all the lawyers doing this kind of work, and between 1849 and 1860 he missed only two court sessions on the circuit.

In 1838, he was defeated in an attempt to become Speaker of the Illinois legislature, and in 1843 he was defeated in an attempt to win nomination for Congress. In 1846 he was elected to Congress, but in 1848 he had to leave because his party had a policy of limiting terms. In 1854, he was defeated in a run for the U.S. Senate. In 1856, he lost the nomination for Vice President, and in 1858 he was again defeated in a race for the Senate. Yet in spite of all these setbacks, in 1860 he was elected President of the United States.

What can we learn about leadership from looking at this chronology? To me, the most remarkable thing is how every time Lincoln failed at something, he was soon trying for something even bigger. When he loses his seat in the state legislature, he runs for the national congress. When he loses a bid for the Senate, he tries to become vice president — and when he loses the Senate race again, he winds up President of the whole country.

Lincoln saw himself as a leader long before anyone else did — and this is the first key to his leadership genius. He may have failed many times, but somehow he always failed upward. He was propelled by a sense of mission, and he was willing and able to do whatever it took to get that great mission accomplished.

From the very first, Lincoln saw himself as the savior of the country. Not just as a successful lawyer or a judge or the owner of a general store. To him, all those things were way stations on the way to something much bigger and more important. Lincoln saw himself as a leader long before he was one. In fact, he saw himself as the leader, right from the first. This wasn’t arrogance or empty ambition. It was a sense of ultimate purpose in service of a worthy cause.

How can you bring that sense of mission into your own life? What are your big, worthy dreams? Are there are goals that you recognized from the first, which you’ve continued to pursue no matter what setbacks have intervened? If that’s the case, then you’re already a leadership genius — you’ve already mastered the art of leading your life in the direction you want it to go.

On the other hand, you may be one of the many people who have put aside any ideas about changing the country or the world. That’s fine — but I do want to repeat the question I asked a moment ago: What are your big, worthy dreams? And I want to emphasize worthy. Having a big car or a boat doesn’t count. Those things are great, but can you see the difference between wanting material success and wanting to make a truly big difference in the world, the way Lincoln did? It’s the difference between just being successful for your own sake, in very conventional terms — and being a leadership genius, not just for yourself, but for other people too. In Lincoln’s case, it was for all people.

Think about your life in terms of a mission – a great purpose that inspires you to leadership — first leadership of yourself, and then of others. If you’ve identified that purpose, the next step is thinking practically and realistically about how you’re going to bring it about. And sometimes the practical side has to be dealt with first, in order to make the larger purpose feasible.

Is there anything about yourself that you suspect might disqualify you from being an effective leader? What are they? How can you turn these perceived weaknesses into your strengths? It’s tempting to think that our leaders should be without weaknesses, but that’s by no means the truth. Leaders should not be without weaknesses that they’re unaware of. Leaders should not be out of touch with what’s going on in their minds and hearts. That awareness in itself is much more important than what challenges it reveals. These are questions that will take more than a few minutes to answer — but I urge you to reflect on them to improve your leadership genius.

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Dr. Tony Alessandra is a behavioral and communication expert, and author of 17 books including The Platinum Rule, Collaborative Selling and The Art of Managing People. Today he is a leading business motivational speaker on communication, customer loyalty and sales.

My 15 years on the field as an NFL official have provided a different perspective on this game which now attracts world-wide interest. I was fortunate to officiate two Super Bowls, VI and XII. I remember those two games, and this most recent one, not only for the excitement and pageantry, but also metaphorically for the lessons that football provides for our lives in this nation and around the world.

Baltimore dominated the game from the opening kickoff until the early 3rd quarter. With the score, 28 to 6 in Baltimore's favor, many thought, "this game is over." This is an easy and comfortable attitude to embrace, in football or in the business and professional world, but, it can prove to be fatal. Then, the lights went out!

After the lights came on again, the 49'ers came roaring back and came within one play of winning the Super Bowl. A football team or a business must be committed to giving maximum effort on every play, or with every customer or client. In addition, the coaches are always re-inventing their offenses and defenses after scouting the other team. Flexibility, not rigidity, is one of forces that fire the "engine" of a champion on the football field, in the factory or in the office.

President Calvin Coolidge once said, "Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race."

You saw this on both sides of the ball and on both teams as Super Bowl XLVII played out. The 49ers played full throttle in spite of being far behind and came back to be only four points behind with less than a minute to play, and had the ball inside the Baltimore ten yard line. Then the Ravens turned it up a notch or two on defense as the game came down to that thrilling finish.

The lesson here is that discipline, the will to do it right and give ALL of one's talent, ALL of one's knowledge and ALL of one's effort on every play, or with every customer or client will be the measure of our success in playing football in the NFL, officiating football in the NFL, (or at any level) and in whatever we do in life. Vince Lombardi, the legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers said it best. He said, "I want 40 men who will give 100% of their knowledge, talent and effort on every play in every game".

Success in life is not a destination, it is a journey. Sometimes it is smooth and there are times when the journey gets rough, but as Don Shula, the Hall of Fame coach of the Baltimore Colts and the Super Bowl champion Miami Dolphins so wisely said, "Success is not forever and failure is not fatal".

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Art Holst is a motivational speaker and legend in the speaking industry. His broad background provides the foundation for his messages spiced with inspiration, humor, and poetry. To learn more about Art go to http://www.speakersoffice.com/art_holst.asp or www.artholst.com.

It's interesting at the beginning of a new year to look back at what articles resonated most with our readers. With 14 speakers on our roster, we've covered quite a variety of subjects. The most popular articles covered such topics as positive psychology, customer service, branding, authentic leadership, adaptability, and franchising. We hope that you find our speakers' posts helpful, enlightening and inspiring.

Here are the ten most read articles on blog.speakersoffice.com/ in 2012:

1) 3 Ways Positive Intelligence Leads to Success - by Shawn Achor
Best-Selling author Shawn Achor shares his research on the "happiness advantage" and how it can boost your personal and professional success.

2) 5 Questions to Ensure Happy Customers - by Dr. Nido Qubein
International speaker and businessman Dr. Nido Qubein suggests 5 questions every organization should ask themselves to ensure happy customers.

3) The First 9 Seconds - by Sally Hogshead
We have been reduced to a 9-second attention span, says Sally Hogshead, which is why the most fascinating messages always triumph. Always.

4) 3 Ways to Strategically Leverage your Book & Platform - by Peter Winick
Guest blogger and thought leader, Peter Winick offers strategies for speakers and authors to leverage their book and platform.

5) Brené Brown: On Leadership, Love and Vulnerability
Dr. Brené Brown says, "As a vulnerability researcher, I’ve noticed a pattern in my conversations and interviews with leaders and entrepreneurs."

6) Lisa Ford's 12 Fundamentals of Exceptional Customer Service
According to Lisa Ford, there are 12 fundamentals of customer service every organization should follow.

7) Grow Your Franchise: An Unconventional Approach - by Desi Williamson
Desi Williamson’s successful Dickey's BBQ franchise is proof opportunities still exist. In this article, he explains his unconventional approach.

8) Howard Putnam: What Makes Southwest Airlines Different?
Howard Putnam, former CEO of Southwest Airlines recently chatted with Brian Lord of Premiere Speakers, about what makes a company like Southwest Airlines consistently great.

9) Are you Adaptable? by Dr. Tony Alessandra
Tony Alessandra says, being willing and able to adapt your behavior increases your ability to communicate and build relationships with other people.

10) New Book! Daring Greatly - by Dr. Brené Brown
Dr. Brené Brown recently announced the title of her new book, Daring Greatly which came out September 2012 and quickly became a New York Times' Best Seller.

Were there other articles that you enjoyed? If so, please let us know in the comments below.

Our lives are the products of our decisions. If we make good decisions, we'll prosper. So how can we be sure that we're making good decisions?

It's a lot like making a casserole: You find a good recipe and you follow it. Just as haphazard procedures won't guarantee good casseroles, so haphazard decisions won't guarantee that you'll reach your goals in life.

The Xerox Corporation, as part of its quality improvement process, came up with this six-step process for making decisions that move you toward your goals:

Step 1: Identify the Issue

First decide what issues you need to address if you're to move on to your next goal. Then narrow the list down to the issue that must be addressed before you can take the next step. Make that the next issue on your agenda.

Step 2: Analyze the Issue

Look at the issue from all angles. Why is it necessary to make a decision on this issue? What will happen if you don't make it? What do you want to happen as a result of the decision? What stands in the way of making this happen? List the obstacles that must be overcome to implement the decision. Then rank them in the order in which they must be overcome.

Step 3: Generate Alternatives

Take the obstacles one at a time and list possible ways to remove them. Brainstorm the subject with others to provide you with a good inventory of alternatives you consider the most likely to work.

Step 4: Select A Specific Alternative

Take the short list and decide which criteria you will use to select the best decision. Analyze the alternatives in the light of your criteria, and choose the one that matches them the closest. Describe the actions you must take to implement the decision and the results you expect to accomplish as a result.

Step 5: Implement the Decision

Execute the actions you described in Step 4.

Step 6: Evaluate the Results

Now examine the results in the light of your expectations. Did the decision accomplish what you wanted it to accomplish? If so, mark it accomplished and move on to the next issue. If not, repeat the process, starting with Step 1.

If you follow these procedures, you will continually learn from your mistakes and build on your successes. You will be able to observe and measure your progress, and savor the moment when you achieve the future you planned for.

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Dr. Nido Qubein is an international speaker and accomplished author on sales, communication, and leadership. He is president of High Point University which has an enrollment of more than 4,000 undergraduate and graduate students. He is also chairman of Great Harvest Bread Company with 220 stores in 41 states.

After spending the past decade studying vulnerability, courage, shame, and worthiness, I’ve come to believe that leadership has nothing to do with position, salary, or number of direct reports. I believe a leader is anyone who holds her- or himself accountable for finding potential in people and processes.

Contrary to how we traditionally think about organizations, leaders are developing strategies and shaping culture across all levels. And, contrary to the myth of the "all-knowing-all-powerful" leader, inspired leadership requires vulnerability: Do we have the courage to show up, be seen, take risks, ask for help, own our mistakes, learn from failure, lean into joy, and can we support the people around us in doing the same?

In our culture, vulnerability has become synonymous with weakness. We associate vulnerability with emotions like fear, shame, and scarcity; emotions that we don’t want to discuss, even when they profoundly affect the way we live, love, parent, and lead.

"Across the private and public sector, in schools and in our communities, we are hungry for authentic leadership – we want to show up, we want to learn, and we want to inspire and be inspired. We are hardwired for connection, curiosity, and engagement."

To reduce our feelings of vulnerability, we wake up every morning, put on our armor, and rarely take it off – especially in our work lives. We use invulnerability as a shield to protect us from discomfort, anxiety, and self-doubt.

The invulnerability shield takes on many shapes and forms. Some of us protect ourselves with perfecting, pretending, and pleasing. We convince ourselves that making everything "just right" or keeping everyone around us happy will minimize our risk of feeling blamed, judged, or criticized. Even though perfecting is exhausting, suffocates innovation, and ultimately leads to resentment and blame, we keep thinking, "Maybe this isn’t working because I’m not perfect enough. I’ll just work harder to be a little more perfect."

Invulnerability can also take the form of disengagement. We protect ourselves by never quite being "all in." We never get too excited or too invested or too hopeful. We’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop. The motto becomes, "It’s easier to live disappointed than it is to feel disappointed."

Not only does the invulnerability armor fail to protect us from experiencing hurt, never taking it off means never letting ourselves be seen. Invulnerability means self-protection over self-expression, fear over courage, blame over accountability, and safety over innovation.

Why is being vulnerable worth the risk?

Because vulnerability is indeed at the core of difficult emotions, but it is also the birthplace of love and belonging, joy, creativity and innovation, adaptability to change and accountability – the experiences that bring purpose and meaning to our lives.

I know it’s hard to believe, especially when we’ve spent our entire lives thinking that vulnerability is weakness, but it’s true. Vulnerability is simply uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. Vulnerability is a part of all emotions – light and dark.

Leadership is all about relationships and to be in relationship (with anyone) is to be vulnerable. Every single day, leaders are called to navigate uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure – the only choice is to do it consciously or unconsciously; to lean into the vulnerability or to push it away.

Across the private and public sector, in schools and in our communities, we are hungry for authentic leadership – we want to show up, we want to learn, and we want to inspire and be inspired. We are hardwired for connection, curiosity, and engagement.

When leaders choose self-protection over transparency, when money and metrics are more valued than relationships and values, and when our self-worth is attached to what we produce, learning and work becomes dehumanized. People disengage and turn away from the very things that the world needs: their talent, their ideas, and their passion.

The equation is simple: Invulnerability in leadership breeds disengagement in culture.

Re-humanizing work and education requires courageous leadership. It requires leaders who are willing to take risks, embrace vulnerabilities, and show up as imperfect, real people.

That’s what truly, deeply inspires us.

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Dr. Brené Brown is a researcher, writer, and a unique speaker whose reputation is built on her ability to explore vulnerable topics with tremendous honesty, warmth, and humor. She is a leading expert on Authenticity, Vulnerability and Courage; and the author of Daring Greatly, which debuted at number two on The New York Times Best Sellers. She is also the author of The Gifts of Imperfection: Letting Go of Who We Think We Should Be and Embracing Who We Are.

Yes, you want your customers to love doing business with you, and you want your colleagues and employees to love working with you, but the most important element in the practice of cultivating Love is, ironically, the one we talk the least about and give virtually no attention to: your own personal connection to the work you do everyday.

Why is that so important? Because it’s impossible (at least in any significant and long-lasting way) to engage, motivate, compel, energize anyone else unless you feel it yourself, first. And love is the way to generate all of the above.

Here’s a process you can use to spark the match in your own heart. Try this, and see if it gives you the juice you need to lead in a way that inspires others to accomplish extraordinary things:

1. Remember Why You Took this Job:

Think back over the course of your career so far and recount the events, jobs, projects etc. that led up to your beginning your current work. Then write your answer to these questions: Why did I take this job/start this company/enlist in this program? Are the ideals that I started with still in place today? If not, how can I re-enliven them?

2. List Every Aspect of Your Current Work/Job/Career:

Make a quick inventory of all the various aspects of your work: tasks, projects, roles, responsibilities, colleagues, higher-ups, employees, customers, clients, underlying values, etc. Write it however works best for you. Categorize if you’d like; or don’t. However you do it, you should be able to look at the finished product and see all the aspects of your work life at the present time.

3. Highlight What and Whom You’re Grateful For:

Use a highlighter to emphasize the items on your list that really resonate with you—those things you love doing, the people you truly care about, the values that you strive to live by—and make coming to work worthwhile. As for the items that don’t get highlighted, well, that’s life. We all have to do things that we don’t love doing in order to do the overall work that we love. (I, for example, don’t love waiting in airports, making sales calls, and tracking expenses). We have a technical term for doing those things anyway. It’s called, "being an adult."

4. Review Your Highlights Everyday:

Once a day—ideally in the morning before things get rolling—review your list and focus on the highlights. Allow yourself to feel genuine gratitude for the things, activities, and people that populate your working experience. That one simple, reflective practice should help to stoke or re-kindle the love in your heart for the work you do.

And if it doesn’t?

It could be that you’re in the wrong place and/or doing the wrong work. But don’t jump to that conclusion rashly; use this opportunity to reflect and consider this work in the greater context of your life and goals.

And remember, you’re starting this process with yourself because that’s how you’ll genuinely and effectively be contagious to those around you. That’s how you’ll inspire others to step up and do the same.

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Steve Farber, author of Greater Than Yourself: The Ultimate Lesson of True Leadership, the president of Extreme Leadership, is a leadership consultant and speaker, and the author of the national bestseller The Radical Leap, and The Radical Edge, and the newly released The Radical Leap Re-Energized: Doing What You Love in the Service of People Who Love What You Do.

We get so engrossed in our profession and work, that we don't take time to "think." As a leader that is one of our most important responsibilities, some quiet time to reflect, ponder the future and clear out the mind webs.

Here is a suggestion that has worked for me over the years.

Bring someone in once in a while "to help you think." No, not an employee or someone who reports to you, that may tell you what you want to hear. Go outside the organization and engage an opposite of you. I am a pragmatist and I need someone who can theorize and stretch me.

At Southwest Airlines and at Braniff International, I utilized the brain and thinking powers of Dr. Don Beck, a former University Professor in Texas. He is an academic, a very strategic thinker and from an entirely different background than me. I would pose the question and he would go off and ponder it and come back with a proposed alternative or solution. It worked time and again.

And today, we are still friends and stay in contact with each other. If you don't have time to think, bring someone in to help you think.

What are other strategies have you tried to schedule time for reflection or strategizing?

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Howard Putnam speaks on leadership, change, transformation, customer service, teams and ethics. He is the former CEO of Southwest Airlines and the first CEO to take a major airline, Braniff International, into, through and out of Chapter 11, getting it flying again in less than two years.

There’s one thing that all geniuses have in common, and it’s something critically important too.

Despite the myth of the isolated loner writing a great novel in his log cabin, geniuses are almost never solitary individuals. On the contrary, they’re usually deeply involved with their families, their colleagues, and quite often with their enemies and rivals. Geniuses are usually surrounded by other people. Not just by yes men, either. Indeed, a quality of genius I want to mention — and it’s far from the least important — is the power to bring out the genius in others.

How can you accomplish this? Well, many personal development programs stress the importance of finding role models or mentors. That is very important — but for bringing out genius in the people around you, the perspective needs to be reversed. You should be a mentor. You should be a role model, not just find one for yourself.

Geniuses in every field have certain characteristics in common. They’re inspired, they’re resilient, they’re focused –and most of them read a lot! Think back over the people we’ve discussed in this program. What characteristics do you share with Einstein, Edison, Churchill, and Lincoln? It would hardly come as a surprise if you were to choose one of those geniuses as a role model. But here’s a more pertinent question: when it comes to role models, would people choose you?

These common characteristics do not occur by chance, they are an integral part of goal attainment. It is worth your time to analyze the constructive characteristics of people who are now where you would like to be– role models. These are people to admire and emulate. Your choices can include people who are dead or living as long as you are familiar with their personalities and accomplishments.

Harry Truman knew the value of role models. When he was in the White House, he often went into the Lincoln bedroom, looked at the late president’s picture and asked, "What would Lincoln have done now?" The answers gave Truman the insight and direction he was seeking. It worked because Truman felt Lincoln was a man worth emulating. Do people feel that way about you?

In becoming a role model that can inspire genius in others, the following guidelines can really help:

First, keep off the pedestal. People will admire and emulate you because of what you’ve accomplished. That’s good. What’s not good is putting you above them, and trying to appear larger than life. We are all human. We all have strengths and weaknesses. You must not lose this perspective on yourself, or others will turn away from you. And remember: isolation is contradictory to genius.

Second, focus on people’s strong points. To ignite and inspire genius, you need to see what an individual might need to emulate, and make a conscious effort to model those qualities. It’s a responsibility — not unlike being a parent — but it’s one that so many geniuses have willingly taken on. Edison had a whole army of assistants and colleagues, as did Walt Disney. Many of them went on to do great things in their own right.

Above all remain yourself — and give others freedom to do the same. Often the tendency when admiring someone is to try to become his or her clone. A genius doesn’t encourage that. A genius wants to be around other geniuses, not wannabes. That’s why the ability to bring out the genius in others is so rewarding.

So — go for it! Put this and everything else we’ve talked about genius into action and let it take you where you’re destined to go. Make the journey your intention, not the outcome. As the great Irish writer James Joyce put it, "Persons of genius make no mistakes. Their errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery."

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Dr. Tony Alessandra is a behavioral and communication expert, and author of 17 books including The Platinum Rule, Collaborative Selling and The Art of Managing People. Today he is a leading business motivational speaker on communication, customer loyalty and sales.
This article originally appeared on Dr. Tony Alessandra's blog. Check it out for more on the topic of genius.