petty. They are never buck-passers. They pick themselves up after defeat – the way Howard Clark of American Express picked himself up after the salad oil swindle. Under Howard’s indomitable leadership, the price of American Express shares increased fourteen-fold. Great leaders are always fanatically committed to their jobs. They do not suffer from the crippling need to be universally loved. They have the guts to make unpopular decisions – including the guts to fire non- performers. Gladstone once said that a great Prime Minister must be a good butcher. I saw the head chef at the Hotel Majestic fire a pastry cook because the poor devil could not get his brioches to rise straight. This ruthlessness made all the other chefs feel that they were working in the best kitchen in the world. Some men are good at leading the multitude – whether it be the labor force in their company, or the voting population in their country. But these same men are often miserable leaders of a small group. Good leaders are decisive. They grasp nettles. Some of them are very odd characters. Lloyd George was sexually chaotic. General Grant, who won the Civil War, drank like a fish. On November 26, 1863, the New York Herald quoted Lincoln as saying: ‘I wish some of you would tell me the brand of whiskey that Grant drinks. I would like to send a barrel of it to my other generals’ Winston Churchill was another hardened drinker. He was capricious and petulant. He was grossly inconsiderate of his staff. He was a colossal egotist. Yet his Chief of Staff wrote of him: ‘I shall always look back on the years I worked with him as some of the most difficult and trying ones in my life. For all that I thank God that I was given the opportunity of working alongside of such a man, and of having my eyes opened to the fact that occasionally such supermen exist on this earth.’ I do not believe that fear is a tool used by good leaders. People do their best work in a happy atmosphere. Ferment and innovation depend on joie de vivre. I am indebted to Charlie Brower of BBDO for his amendment to the 13th chapter of St Paul’s first Epistle to the Corinthians: ‘A man who spendeth his life gathering gold for the United