According to the Ideal Leadership Model, a leader is one who leads his or her organization forward in a positive direction. The components of leadership are leadership conditions and leadership capital.

Conditions determine who gets to be a leader in the first place. Basically, a person must be in the right place, at the right time, doing the right things, with the right people - to have an opportunity to lead.

How well they lead depends on their leadership capital: their philosophical orientation made up of vision and values, their personal characteristics of wisdom and courage, and their interpersonal interaction of trust and voice.