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In the opening chapter of this volume, Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood enlighten us with a unique perspective toward the understanding of leadership. They point out that in the past, most leadership research used an inside/out approach that studies leadership attributes (i.e., what is inside oneself that makes an effective leader). However, what matters more are the results that effective leadership produces. Therefore, an outside/in, business-values-driven approach should be adopted to match leadership to the expectations of various stakeholders, including customers, investors, organizations, and employees. The authors stress the importance of building leadership brand to better capture what stakeholders want and propose seven principles that can produce sustainable, long-lasting results from leadership development.

Our query into “what is leadership” can be traced back to Galton (1869) in his book, Hereditary Genius. Leadership, as a unique characteristic of extraordinary individual leaders, has dominated leadership research up until the early 1950s and was then followed by the rise of behavioral views of leadership such as situational leadership, transformational leadership, among others. These earlier views of leadership have been developed mainly among psychologists. We have not done sufficient work to view leadership from a business values perspective. Filling in this important gap, Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood answer the question “what is leadership” by focusing on an outside/in view of leadership that draws on business values beyond psychological principles. They ask four important questions that shape the definition of effective leadership: What are the outcomes of good leadership? What must every leader know, do, and be? How do we develop leadership (not just leaders) from the outside/in? And how do leaders make long-term change really happen? Answers to these four questions can lead us to clarify why leadership matters, nail the basics of leadership, create a leadership brand, and ensure leadership sustainability.

Hogan and Benson's chapter in this volume used the CEO of both Nissan and Renault Ghosn, who was born in Brazil with Lebanese heritage, educated in France, worked in the U.S., and then resurrected a major Japanese firm, as an example to support the view that the principles of leadership are formal and not culture specific. Campbell (2006) earlier had argued that some leadership principles are universal and timeless, such as ethics and integrity. Ethical leadership is critically important in our global society today. The fact that ethical and moral issues have contributed to the falling of banks and financial institutions on Wall Street and in many other parts of the world tells us that ethical leadership is a prerequisite for the health of the global market. Financial institutions are required to engage in global thinking and acceptable standards of behavior to regain a stable and safe global financial market (Garten, 2008).

In this chapter, we empirically examine leaders’ proactivity by taking the goal-process view of proactivity and from a multiple-rating source perspective. We proposed five behavioral indicators (envisioning and following goals, planning, solving problems, creating ideas, and championing change) to evaluate the key stages in the process of achieving proactive goals. We collected 360-degree ratings from leaders themselves, their supervisors, colleagues, and subordinates on these key indicators. The specific aim of this study is to (1) assess factorial validity of these five proactivity-related constructs, and (2) gauge whether different rater groups have consistent or different views in evaluating target leaders’ proactivity. Data were collected from a total of 535 part-time EMBA students, and data were analyzed by a Correlated Trait-Uncorrelated Method (CTUM) model. Results showed that (1) the five proactivity-related indicators were highly intercorrelated and can be influenced by a higher-order proactivity factor, and (2) ratings on the same construct but from different raters consistently converged on the same factor, revealing that different raters have a consistent perception in evaluating leaders’ multiple dimensions of proactivity.