“If you don’t take losses (errors) seriously,
if it doesn’t really bother you,
I don’t think you are going to be a great leader.
You’ve got to lose sleep at night.”
— Mike Sheehan CEO of Hill Holliday, The New York Times, Corner Office, June 3, 2012

The best leaders are driven. The best leaders feel the pain of their organizations’ imperfections, of effort or design that falls short of the goal. The best leaders yearn for levels of achievement that others feel are unrealistic, unobtainable, impossible.

The best leaders believe in you, in their organizations, and in themselves. And they will accept nothing less than the best that is in you.

The best leaders are tough. They will push you beyond your limits to do things that astound and delight you, that leave you proud and grateful (and exhausted and spent). Occasionally you may curse them under your breath and complain to your spouse about them, but you will always honor and revere them for the excellence they lead you to find within yourself.

Closing quotes:

“The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture past them into the impossible.”  — Arthur C. Clarke

“Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.”  — Arthur Schopenhauer

“If you limit your choice only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.”  — Robert Fritz