What is the Most Important Quality a Leader Should Have?

We see this question pop up regularly in articles and posts on media sites such as Inc., Entrepreneur, Fast Company, and many others; even here on LinkedIn it makes an appearance here and there.

It has a bit of a click-bait-ish quality to it, yet most of us can’t help but add our favorite tip-of-the-tongue answer to the contest, if only virtually, by reflexively considering one or two characteristics, without actually typing them in the comments section.

Intuitively we know, of course, that any answer to that question would carry about as much weight as a definitive answer to “What’s