In the organizational setting of years gone by, most managers spent their time on the tasks and processes associated with planning, organizing, controlling, staffing, coordinating, and troubleshooting.

In today’s dynamic business world, you still have these traditional responsibilities; however, you must also juggle the multiple complexities and options for making your world “better, faster, and cheaper.” To be an effective manager, you must be an effective leader—a leader of transformation!

Why is this critical? Research tells us that successful organizational transformation is 70 to 90 percent based on leadership and only 10 to 30 percent on management.

Most people think they know what leadership is. It looks like the confident business head at the podium, the politician greeting constituents, someone advancing a social cause, or the captain of the ship plotting a new direction. Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi, and Eleanor Roosevelt come to mind. It sounds like, “I have a dream,” or “Mr. Gorbachev, take down this wall!”

In its most simplistic form, leadership is your ability to compel people to act in a complementary manner that accomplishes desirable organizational goals with integrity and respect. It’s the enabler that allows you to get things done with and through your team. It pulls people as opposed to pushing them. It’s the steady and confident force behind the organization’s transformation.

Leadership’s professional traits include high confidence and deliberation, low anxiety, and an ability to motivate.

Its personal attributes include care, fortitude, perseverance, intelligence, nurturance, and sound judgment.

Its style is flexible, adaptable to people and circumstance.

Its tasks include conflict resolution, persuasion, decision making, social relations, and teaching.

Its behaviors include welcoming new ideas, managing information, integrating people, building community, and managing productivity.

Its approach includes rallying, rebellion, and taking charge.

A leader’s job description has five major components for you to consider and master. The first responsibility of leadership involves your ability to create a vision. A vision identifies the organization’s desired end-state. It gives people a direction and a goal. It motivates and inspires people to a common cause, and it builds organizational unity. It enables people to build linkage between their activities and how they contribute to the greater good.

Second, leaders cultivate a desirable culture. Through your words and actions, you set the tone for the organization. Your words must convey confidence, respect, and authority; your actions must be reflective of the organization’s values, characterized with honesty and integrity. Your zeal and energy can serve as a benchmark for your team. Your style must be open, and it should welcome all perspectives. You also need to instill a sense of urgency.

Third, leadership is about allocating limited resources—financial and human. As much as you want to give everyone a blank check or an endless supply of personnel requisitions as they leave your office, reality dictates that you play the role of tiebreaker when it comes to competing interests. You need analytical skills, as well as a team-building focus to keep everyone dedicated to “bigger picture” concerns versus parochial temptations.

Fourth, leaders communicate. You not only need to “walk the talk” but also you need to “talk the talk.” Your communications efforts must “connect” with your team, conveying your vision and reinforcing your organizational values at every opportunity.

Last, leaders get targeted results. Ask any former manager of the New York Yankees, and he’ll tell you that wins are nice (and necessary) during the regular season, but victories in the playoffs and World Series rings are what count. This holds true for corporate America as well.

While no one realistically expects you to be the next Eleanor Roosevelt or Mahatma Gandhi, your team likely has high standards to which you’re held. Your efforts to provide direction and to compel them to act can be the key barometer for your future.