It’s all about trust. The 30+ years of my professional and military career have given me the opportunity to witness extraordinary as well as very bad leadership examples. I was lucky enough to serve under fairly exceptional bosses, both male and female, and if I were to describe their most impressive leadership skill, I would not hesitate to pick one: trust.

Trusting your subordinates to do their job well means that you will be able to run your organization through delegation and not micromanagement.

Trusting in their loyalty will spare you the agonizing, time-consuming and nerve-wracking search for non-existent conspiracies.

And finally, trust in your own abilities will allow you to hire, manage, and promote people who might be better than you are but whose abilities will make your own career shine more brightly.

Trust does not mean lack of control but is rather, until proven misplaced, the best leadership skill I know of.