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Good leaders can steer a business through the nine to five, but great leaders can navigate a company into the next generation.

While a good leader is content with the status quo, a truly great leader has the ability to innovate and disrupt to ensure organisations stay on the cutting edge. They go above and beyond the duty of a manager to inspire staff and build a motivated workplace.

Stepping up from a good to a great leader could make a huge difference to the direction of a business and it's possible with some simple, but effective practices.

Being a leader is hard. Some people put themselves in a leadership role and others are there by accident or even default. It's unreasonable to expect that all leaders are naturally born. They need support and tools to be successful and bring others along.

My Inc. colleagues and I have seen lots of leaders in action. Some leaders are are just getting by, but others are amazing. We have witnessed several common tools these amazing leaders use to get performance from their teams. Here are some we have seen that work consistently.

One of the most popular Dilbert comic strips in the cartoon’s history begins with Dilbert’s boss relaying senior leadership’s explanation for the company’s low profits. In response to his boss, Dilbert asks incredulously, “So they’re saying that profits went up because of great leadership and down because of a weak economy?” To which Dilbert’s boss replies, “These meetings will go faster if you stop putting things in context.”

Great leadership is indeed a difficult thing to pin down and understand. You know a great leader when you’re working for one, but even they can have a hard time explaining the specifics of what they do that makes their leadership so effective. Great leadership is dynamic; it melds a variety of unique skills into an integrated whole.

Telling CEOs these days that leadership drives performance is a bit like saying that oxygen is necessary to breathe. Over 90 percent of CEOs are already planning to increase investment in leadership development because they see it as the single most important human-capital issue their organizations face. And they’re right to do so: earlier McKinsey research has consistently shown that good leadership is a critical part of organizational health, which is an important driver of shareholder returns.

Know this: Hard work alone won't get you there.

Advancement in digital technologies has disrupted everything, including leadership styles, according to Barry Libert, Jerry Wind and Megan Beck Fenley. Employees want more ownership rather than to follow instruction; customers want to participate in the marketing and development process; and leaders are finding that open and agile organizations are able to maneuver more effectively than organizations where “all insight and direction comes from the top. In short, the autocratic Commander, whether brilliant or misguided, just won’t cut it anymore.

The challenges are well known: women in business continue to face a formidable gender gap for senior-leadership positions.1 Moreover, there are fewer and fewer women at each step along the path to the C-suite, although they represent a majority of entry-level employees at Fortune 500 companies and outnumber men in college-graduation rates.2 Increasingly, the barriers too are well known: a mix of cultural factors, ingrained mind-sets, and stubborn forms of behavior, including a tendency to tap a much narrower band of women leaders than is possible given the available talent pool.

Not too long ago, opinion researchers held a focus group experiment in two Colorado towns: Boulder, known for its left-leaning politics, and Colorado Springs, where views typically reflect a more rightward bent. Not surprisingly, the researchers found that when people talked about big, complex issues like climate change or same-sex marriage with others who thought the same way, they didn’t become smarter on the subject; they just became more set in their opinions.

Capability building has remained a high strategic priority since we first surveyed executives on organizational capabilities in 2010. Four years later, many companies are using the same approaches to learning and skill development—namely, on-the-job teaching—that were most common in the earlier survey. Yet the responses to our latest survey on the topic1 suggest that organizations, to perform at their best, now focus on a different set of capabilities2 and different groups of employees to develop.

Amid their evolving needs and infrequent use of more novel skill-building approaches (digital or experiential learning methods, for example), executives report notable challenges in their capability-building programs. Among the most pressing are a lack of learning-related metrics and difficulty ensuring the continuous improvement of skills. In the results from organizations that are most effective at capability building,3 however, are some lessons for improvement. Respondents at these companies are much likelier than others to say sustaining capabilities over time and linking learning to company performance are integral parts of their capability-building programs. They typically use more methods than others to develop employee skills, more often say their human-resources functions and businesses co-own learning, more often use metrics to assess the impact of their programs on the business, and in turn report more success at meeting their programs’ targets.

No matter how much the world changes, there will be timeless truths about the best way to lead others to success.

Self-made industrialist Andrew Carnegie was the wealthiest man on the planet in the early 20th century and was a student of what it takes to achieve greatness. In 1908, he met with the journalist Napoleon Hill and decided that Hill would be the vehicle for sharing his strategies with the world. Take a look at the summary.

What would you do if you had a working prototype of a revolutionary tablet computer that was receiving rave reviews well before Apple came out with its iPad? Cancel further funding for the project in favor of developing an updated version of an existing company product? In hindsight that seems crazy, but it’s exactly what Microsoft did with its prototype “Courier” tablet.

Similar fates often befall innovations within large companies. It is not enough to come up with next great idea. To turn that idea into a reality you have to influence people and gain their support. You must do that in the face of vast forces arrayed against innovation within an established organization, which include inertia, resistance to change, fear of failure, financial disincentives, and the tendency of people and organizations to favor what has worked in the past. Then there’s what might be the biggest hurdle of all, people’s inability to envision something that is truly different.

Have you ever seen someone solve a Rubik’s cube in less than 40 seconds? It’s mesmerizing. Turn. Twist. Turn again. Rotate. Align. Spin. The action goes by so fast, it’s almost dizzying.

How do people get so good at solving those little cubes? It’s not just the principle of “practice makes perfect.” The most avid Rubik’s cube solvers will tell you that they got really good once they understood the mathematical principles of the cube. They know how many rotations are needed to align certain blocks. They understand that the middle block never moves. They count their turns to ensure they’re turning in correct steps. In short, they know exactly how the cube functions, and how to make it work.

The best leaders do almost the same thing. They understand the personality and dynamics of their team. They take the time to get to know individuals and learn their skills and strengths. And then, they use their time-tested strategies—the five phrases below—again and again, to lead the team past any obstacle and empower them to create great work in every situation. In fact, the best leaders use these five phrases repetitively because they are so successful. What are the five signature repetitive phrases of virtuoso leaders, and the one thing they’ll never say? Read on to find out.

What does it take to be a great leader? In a fascinating series of talks, business leaders, researchers, a famed general, and an orchestra conductor tackle that question from their diverse viewpoints.

Some of their answers will surprise you. Here are seven of their best lessons.

We talk about happiness as if it were a thing to be discovered and acquired.

But happiness can never be found externally. It is not a possession to be acquired or a set of conditions, but a state of mind.

The happiest people don't necessarily have the best of everything, but they have learned to make the best of whatever they have.

The happiest leaders aren't necessarily focused on success or failure but live by a different perspective--and that outlook makes all the difference.

Here's how they live.

Game of Thrones is set in a medieval world of knights, dragons, and magic, characterized by long, cold seasons, and populated with White Walkers. This most amazing and compelling TV series has captured the hearts and minds of people around the world. In the history of mankind, never has a TV series been so downloaded and watched, so are there leadership lessons we can take from this series?

Before I answer this question, I will tell you a story; I run a training company, after all. A man in a hot-air balloon realized he was lost. He reduced the altitude and spotted a woman below. He descended a bit more and shouted, “Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”

Some people weren't my mentors by design, but without them, I would've missed out on lessons about toughness, honesty, and ingenuity. And more importantly, I wouldn't be the leader I am today. Great mentors can take on many, but here are the five key insights my mentors taught me

“Ask me for anything,” Napoleon Bonaparte once remarked, “but time.” Board members today don’t have that luxury either. Directors remain under pressure from activist investors and other constituents, regulation is becoming more demanding, and businesses are growing more complex. McKinsey research suggests that the most effective directors are meeting these challenges by spending twice as many days a year on board activities as other directors do.

It was Daniel Goleman who first brought the term “emotional intelligence” to a wide audience with his 1995 book of that name, and it was Goleman who first applied the concept to business with his 1998 HBR article, reprinted here. In his research at nearly 200 large, global companies, Goleman found that while the qualities traditionally associated with leadership—such as intelligence, toughness, determination, and vision—are required for success, they are insufficient. Truly effective leaders are also distinguished by a high degree of emotional intelligence, which includes self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skill.

A glance at today’s headlines leaves little doubt that we have entered a new era of geopolitical turbulence. Acts of terror and violence, humanitarian crises, and public health emergencies are rarely localized events. Instead, these shocks transcend borders, presenting global challenges. Just as one crisis fades, another rises to take its place. Adding further complexity, today’s enemy (unlike in that previous period of great geopolitical uncertainty, the Cold War) is often unseen or unknown.

Brené Brown, an expert on social connection, conducted thousands of interviews to discover what lies at the root of social connection. A thorough analysis of the data revealed what it was: vulnerability.

Very few founders, startup CEOs, board members, investors, and others supporting the entrepreneurial community actively pursue and advocate disciplined, professional leadership development. This is an enormous missed opportunity.

Entrepreneurs, especially founders and startup CEOs, need not wait to be encouraged to do this work. They should not consider their own development as a nice-to-have, an indulgence, or an unnecessary expense. They certainly should not delay until their jobs are threatened by their poor performance. 

Here are seven reasons (among many) that every founder and entrepreneurial CEO should actively develop their leadership, and a question about each.