While the corporate world often uses the terms boss and leader (team) interchangeably, there are very distinct characteristics that delineate the two. WG Rowe (Clark, 1997) identified the difference between the two by pointing out that being a leader simply means having assigned leadership, with the authority to complete tasks. True leaders demonstrate emergent leadership by influencing others to achieve goals. Once you define the difference, you can easily recognize when they had real leadership or simply a boss to answer to. A leader can be a boss, but a boss is not necessarily a leader. Considering my experiences with leadership, and particularly negative leadership, I quickly concluded that in cases where I felt I had positive leadership, my leaders were seen as leaders. But in the situations where I recall negative leadership experiences, it was at the hands of a person I considered a boss but not necessarily a leader. Early in my work life and career, I had little understanding of what leadership was and what to expect from it. my superiors. Unfortunately, my boss also didn't have this understanding. Very business minded and always looking at the bottom line, my boss had very little time or appreciation for the people responsible for the company's success. She spent her time divided: half the time locked in her office and the other half of the time checking up on people, barking orders, and micromanaging everyone's daily tasks. She never knew any of us on a personal level and preferred not to be bothered by the happenings of people's lives outside of business. When a problem arose, he found the solution and followed up with a memo explaining the new policy or a p... means of paper... his. “It's like driving a car at night. You never see beyond your headlights, but you can make the entire trip this way. (EL Doctorow) Leadership requires a wide range of personality traits and learned behaviors. While some individuals are what we might call “natural leaders,” this in no way suggests that one cannot learn to be an effective and successful leader. Regardless, there are key traits and behaviors required to be an effective and successful leader. In my personal example, the strongest areas of potential for improvement were interpersonal skills, personal vision and communication. My boss was tenacious and had enormous potential to lead our organization to incredible success if he learned to harness the potential of his people, because it is the followers who determine the success of the leader. (Clark, 1997)