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Leadership is all about one enduring quality: character.

I'd tend to disagree…given the plethora of political and business leaders whose seem to lack every virtuous character trait ever identified. But then I realized that it's all in the definition.

In this lesson, Gary Ryan Blair is using the term “leadership” to mean far more than just someone who controls a group organization. He's using it to describe the act of being moral compass, a good example, or someone to whom others can look for direction and inspiration.

Leaders are stewards of nation, company, team, or family ideals. Leaders exist to protect cherish values and core beliefs, to sustain and inspire hopes, and, most importantly, to drive positive results for all.

A steward is a caretaker, someone who holds something in trust on behalf of others. And it it not a behavior motivated out of self-interest.

In that sense, merely holding a leadership position, does not make someone a real leader in any moral sense of the word. Real leadership requires principles, honesty, and esteem for others.

This is another very refreshing lesson in goal setting and life success. How many times a day do you hear, “For leaders to be effective there must be uncompromising  emphasis on integrity of character”? Or how often do you hear, “A steward is an individual who upholds what is best for everyone…even if it may not be in their best interest”?

My guess: zero. Almost no world leaders proclaim—let alone exhibit—sound virtue in public or private

In a world where politicians buy votes with favors and goodies, make one set of rules for everyone else and another for themselves, name landmarks after themselves, and live lives of extreme hypocrisy, where celebrities marry and divorce with predictable regularity, use drugs at will, and get arrested on cue, where professional athletes have no moral code, the models of “success” that we have—and that our children have—are pathetic.

It is up to us to show a different model of success that defines leadership as existing only in the confines of moral virtue.

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Alison Moore Smith is a 61-year-old entrepreneur who graduated from BYU in 1987. She has been (very happily) married to Samuel M. Smith for 40 years. They are parents of six incredible children and grandparents to two astounding grandsons. She is the author of The 7 Success Habits of Homeschoolers.