Great leaders have teams who are highly engaged, volunteer their best efforts often going beyond the chosen path to innovate, collaborate and contribute not only for themselves and their leader but also for their organisation. Unsuccessful leaders have team members who exist only for their pay check, are disengaged and do just so much to survive at work i.e. they are there out of compulsion rather than from a sense of commitment.

One of the key factors that differentiate both the Leaders is that one has clarity of purpose while the other doesn’t.

Great Leaders have a clear purpose, a compelling vision, rally their team towards a larger than life vision and have execution strategies to make their vision a reality. They are clear on where they want to go. They translate an organisations’ strategy into a relevant team strategy, successfully engage and align their team, customers and other stakeholders towards this vision.

They provide clarity on why they exist as a team, where would they like to go and how they would get there. A plan without Vision is drudgery and a Vision without a plan is just day dreaming. The leader engages their teams on all four endowments – body, mind, heart, and spirit.

They are able to inspire their team to think big, stretch beyond goals they have ever accomplished in the past and find deeper meaning in their work. Leaders with purpose demonstrate humility, courage in adversity, take ownership for failures, credit the team for success, and are open to change, receive feedback from all levels in their team and circumvent any obstacle on the way.

Great Leaders have high personal credibility, build a high trust culture, create successful systems for longterm growth and sustenance, have razor-sharp focus, execute their topmost priorities and identify and help team members develop their innate potential. They are consistently focussed on the ultimate goal of their organization and continuously strive towards achieving it. Seeing their leader walk-the-talk, the team is also inspired in doing the same and work towards achieving the common goal as a team.

Clarity of their purpose helps the leader, say no to unimportant things and allows them to say yes to the significant things - those that are in alignment with the vision and mission. Billionaire Warren Buffet vouches for this, and he says "The difference between successful leaders and not so successful ones are that successful Leaders say no to almost everything to keep their laser sharp focus." They say no to good or even great ideas and give disproportionate focus on things that matter most.