5 More of the 15 Greatest Leaders Through History

 

This week I'm exploring LIFE's 15 greatest leaders through history.  We started with the first five yesterday:

1. Mohandas Gandhi
2. Vince Lombardi
3. Franklin D. Roosevelt
4. Steve Jobs
5. Nelson Mandela

Today we're going to tackle the next five:

1. Gloria Steinem: "The best kind of leader: one who creates independence, not dependence."
2. Golda Meir: According to the New York Times 1978 obituary, "Mrs. Meir had a gift for making complex issues appear simple and expressing her views in plain but emotional terms: 'Our generation reclaimed the land, our children fought the war and our grandchildren should enjoy the peace.'  Even when she spoke to an audience of thousands, it could sound as though she was speaking in her living room."
3. Martin Luther King Jr.: "We all have the drum major instinct.  We all want to be important, to surpass others, to achieve distinction, to lead the parade ... And the great issue of life is to harness the drum major instinct.  It is a good instinct if you don't distort it and pervert it.  Don't give it up.  Keep feeling the need for being important.  Keep feeling the need for being first.  But I want you to be the first in love.  I want you to be the first in moral excellence.  I want you to be the first in generosity."
4. Winston Churchill: From Time 100's most important people of the century, "He stood unchangeable, as the greatest of all Britain's war leaders.  It was not only his country, though, they owed him a debt.  So too did the world of free men and women to whom he made a constant and inclusive appeal in his magnificent speeches from embattled Britain in 1940 and 1941.  Churchill did not merely hate tyranny, he despised it."
5. Douglas MacArthur: "Duty, Honor, Country.  Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be.  They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn."

Along with our additional five great leaders, here are two more of the five traits that I believe make good project leaders:

1. "Figure-it-out" resourcefulness: This implies creativity and occasional out-of-the-box thinking to solve problems along with a tenacious, never-give-up approach to overcoming obstacles and resource allocation issues.
2. Highly-developed communication skills: It's paramount that project managers are able to effectively communicate with stakeholders, project teams, and their peers.  If project managers are unable to customize their communication style to the appropriate audience, success will be elusive.

Tomorrow we'll finish up with LIFE's list of 15 of the greatest leaders through history, and cover the last trait I think makes a good project leader. 

Regardless of your chosen project management methodology or the project tools you utilize to manage work in your organization, effectively managing project-based work in the future will require us to master leadership skills that will enable us to inspire and lead project teams.