Michael Eisner used to say, "micromanaging is underrated." I agree with him-to a point. Sweating the details can show how much you care. "Great" is often a collection of very small things, after all. The downside of micromanagement is that it can be stultifying, and it can reinforce the feeling that you don't trust the people who work for you.

• Take responsibility when you screw up. In work, in life, you'll be more respected and trusted by the people around you if you own up to your mistakes. It's impossible to avoid them; but it is possible to acknowledge them, learn from them, and set an example that it's okay to get things wrong sometimes.

but I was determined not to live a life of disappointment. Whatever shape my life took, I told myself, there wasn’t a chance in the world that I was going to toil in frustration and lack fulfillment.

We all want to believe we're indispensable. You have to be self-aware enough that you don't cling to the notion that you are the only person who can do this job. At its essence, good leadership isn't about being indispensable; it's about helping others be prepared to step into your shoes-giving them access to your own decision-making, identifying

Thoughtfulness. Thoughtfulness is one of the most underrated elements of good leadership. It is the process of gaining knowledge, so an opinion rendered or decision made is more credible and more likely to be correct. It's simply about taking the time to develop informed opinions.

Integrity. Nothing is more important than the quality and inregrity of an organization's people and its product. A company's success depends on setting high ethical standards for all things, big and small. Another way of saying this is: The way you do anything is the way you do everything

When the unexpected does happen, a kind of instinctive triage kicks in. You have to rely on your own internal "threat scale." There are drop-everything events, and there are others when you say to yourself, This is serious, I need to be engaged right now, but I also need to extricate myself and focus on other things and return to this later.

A company's reputation is the sum total of the actions of its people and the quality of its products. You have to demand integrity from your people and your products at all times.

Curiosity. A deep and abiding curiosity enables the discovery of new people, places, and ideas, as well as an awareness and an understanding of the marketplace and its changing dynamics. The path to innovation begins with curiosity.