by Steve Adubato, PhD

Leadership means different things to different people. Candidate for Governor in New York Andrew Cuomo criticized incumbent George Pataki for "holding Rudy Guiliani's coat" after the September 11th disaster. Apparently, Andy Cuomo thinks leadership is about being out front. He argued that it was Rudy Guiliani's face we saw during most of the press conferences and that Pataki was playing second fiddle because he stood behind the Mayor. I couldn't disagree more. While Rudy Guiliani exhibited extraordinary leadership after September 11th, so did countless others whose names and faces we will never know. Leadership is not about who gets the most publicity or who is out front the most.

Great leadership comes is all shapes and sizes. By all accounts, Governor Pataki did a range of things behind the scenes, not in front of the cameras, that helped so many who were affected by 9-11. In fact, Rudy Guiliani himself praised Pataki as a partner and collegue in this crisis. Guiliani said he couldn't have done what he did if it weren't for the Governor.

This is not about politics. It's not about Democrats or Republicans. It is about the fact that real teamwork, particularly in a crisis, requires different people to play different roles at different times for different reasons. Imagine if the Governor and the Mayor were fighting over who would run those press conferences or who would get more face time with the media? It would have made a disastrous situation even worse. Luckily Pataki's ego was secure enough to understand his role and sense that Rudy needed to do what he did.

Truly great leaders must be able to submerge their egos and allow others to step up when the need arises. I said it before but it bears repeating…Leaders aren't always at the top of the organization chart. Real leaders are not defined by their titles. Lots of CEOs exhibit few genuine leadership qualities yet are consumed by the trappings of their positions. Conversely, there are countless individuals who lack the title or status in an organization, but are relied upon for direction, inspiration, and clarity. Leadership is as much and attitude and philosophy as anything else.

All of us have the potential to lead, we saw that after September 11th. Cops, firefighters, emergency workers and others who just happened to be at a certain place at a historic time stepped up to lead. None of them sought recognition, but all understood their role in this courageous team effort. Like I said, we may never know their names or recognize their faces, but there is no question that they exhibited great leadership, and in some cases, true heroism. Leadership is about the ten Port Authority workers with no special titles or lofty positions who carried their co-worker John Abruzzo, a quadriplegic confined to a wheelchair, down sixty five flights of stairs out of the World Trade Center just moments before it collapsed.

So ignore what Andy Cuomo says about Governor Pataki's lack of leadership after September 11th. He is dead wrong and so is anyone else who thinks leadership is always so visible and recognizable. Write to me about a leader in your organization or in your life who few may recognize but who has a great impact on others. A future column will share these different pieces of the leadership equation.