Quora Answer: How Do I Know if I Have Leadership Qualities?

The following is my answer to a Quora question: “How do I know if I have leadership qualities?” 

A good leader is surrounded by leaders.  A great leader is surrounded by good leaders.  The calibre of the people around you gives you a good indication of where you stand.  Recruit generals, and not water carriers, and trust their counsel.  In time, you will be a better leader because the alternative is that your generals will leave or they will usurp you. 

Leadership is an attribute that must be constantly sharpened on the whetstone of crisis and quenched in the crucible of challenges.  A great leader who sits basking in his last accomplishments eventually becomes indolent and fails.  Yesterday’s triumph belongs to the past.  As long as you can understand that, you will always be hungry for the next opportunity to grow, the next challenge of your abilities, the next hill, the next ocean, the next horizon.  Along the way, with every success and failure, as you keep on, you will gather people who share your vision, and because they believe in you, and work with you, you have become a leader.