RUST COMMENTARY: GOOD LEADER CONVINCES PEOPLE TO GO PLACES THEY WOULDN'T GO ALONE

The role of a leader: Leadership is the ability to convince people to follow a path they have never taken to a place they have never been -- and, upon finding it to be successful, to do it over and over again.

For any business to be successful, the one ingredient that is not optional is strong leadership. Leadership starts with a single leader at the top -- usually the president and/or CEO. Put a weak leader there, and leaders in various other parts of the organization will become demotivated and leave.

A few years ago, an M.B.A. intern in my organization posed another, somewhat similar question: "What is the role of a leader?" My answer at the time was lengthier and less logically formed. But I have since refined it, and it also may be worth sharing here. The role of a leader is:

* To create a clear understanding of the current reality and a healthy dissatisfaction with the current situation.

* To help develop a shared vision of a more desirable future situation.

* To create the belief that there is a viable path from the former to the latter.

* To create an environment in which people are motivated to embark on the journey to that future.

I had just finished answering the first question when the intern fired a second one: "If that is the role of the leader, what are the responsibilities of the leader?" Once again, I fearlessly launched into another spur-of-the moment reply. The responsibilities of a leader are:

* To help the organization remove or overcome obstacles on the journey.

* To assure that the resources needed for the journey are available or can be obtained.

* To provide encouragement, honest feedback (positive or negative), and continued support during the journey.

* To take part in the journey.

At a conference a few years ago, I asked Robert Galvin, the former chairman of Motorola Inc.: "What is the most important aspect of leadership?" His answer: "To take people to places they would be afraid to go alone."

I liked that answer so well that I have integrated it into my own leadership definitions. I also asked him whether leadership can be taught. "Not exactly," he replied, "but it can be modeled and emulated."

As I reflected on Galvin's observations, I realized that there is a large quantity of unrealized leadership in everyone. The amount varies, and the circumstances under which it emerges (if ever) depend on whether it is needed, the other potential leaders available, and the risks involved in assuming a leadership role.

In an earlier column, I concluded that great leaders need one ingredient more than anything else: great followers. Those followers are also leaders in their own right, but they lead only a few people at most.

Real leaders must help the followers decide where they are going and how they will get there. Then they must keep the group on course during the journey as unexpected obstacles and pitfalls are encountered. When leaders assume their roles properly and take their responsibilities seriously, followers will almost always respond -- and usually successfully. -- John Mariotti, president, the Enterprise Group

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Cost of acquittal: Now that the impeachment trial is coming to a close, Democrats are hoping for a censure motion as a way to explain themselves to the nation. This could be difficult. Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex) has left open the possibility that he will try to shut down a censure motion with a filibuster. Some would find it hard to tell the difference between a weak findings of fact and the tough censure motion Democrats are calling for, but the White House offensive against the findings may have alienated Republican moderates needed for censure. One possible supporter of censure may reveal just how tough it will be. Presidential defender Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) says he was initially against censure because early drafts "went way too far," but he may change his mind because newer drafts are more pleasing.

Besides making Senate Democrats scurry for a moral declaration written by delicately balancing the political needs, other costs have been paid to achieve Clinton's acquittal. In Friday's Wall Street Journal, Paul Gigot points out some of them: liberalism in general -- and feminism in particular -- has lost its moral voice, the president has had to move back to the left, and, for the remaining months of Bill Clinton's term, Democrats will live in fear, knowing that they made possible any future Clinton scandal. -- Washington Update

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Starr exonerated: President Clinton's lawyers and House Democrats keep carping at Ken Starr about his office's treatment of Monica Lewinsky. They claim that she wasn't able to call a lawyer when questioned in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. However, according to newly released court documents, U.S. District Court Judge Norma Holloway Johnson concluded that Starr's prosecutors gave Lewinsky several opportunities to call anyone she wanted. It is noteworthy that, even when attacked with this false charge in the House Judiciary hearing, Starr properly refrained from discussing the sealed material that would have helped him. -- Washington Update

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Last week, Congressional Quarterly, the authoritative, independent news service, looked back at the 1998 session -- the first year of Monica -- and reported, "Even without the votes that made him the first elected president in U.S. history to be impeached, Clinton's legislative year has to be scored as a failure, if the goal was to advance a policy agenda. Virtually all his major proposals died."

Ever since Dwight Eisenhower's first term, CQ has calculated the percentage of roll calls on which the president's position has prevailed. In 1998, Clinton succeeded on 51 percent of the 154 House and Senate floor votes on which he took a position. It was the sixth-lowest, lower than the sixth-year scores of Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan, who also had opposition Congresses, and even lower than Richard Nixon's score in 1974, the year he was forced to resign.White House aides point out that in the end-of-the-session bargaining over an omnibus appropriations bill, Clinton outmaneuvered the Republican congressional leadership and rescued -- with a single vote -- several of his domestic and foreign initiatives.

But the big items in his 1998 State of the Union address, the ones that won public applause, were scuttled: a major anti-tobacco initiative, an HMO patients' bill of rights, expansion of Medicare to include younger people, campaign-finance reform, a boost in the minimum wage and fast-track trade negotiation authority.

Most of those will be back on the agenda this year, but the prospects appear at least as dim. The 1997 balanced-budget agreement could turn out to be the last significant Clinton legislative achievement. -- David Broder, Washington Post columnist

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Red-faced Redford: Sundance turns to porn and cannibalism! In 1996 Robert Redford gave an interview where he expressed concern that movies at his Sundance Film Festival were becoming too violent and too sex-drenched.

"I'd gone to the theater one night during the '95 festival to see a few films -- including "Shallow Grave" and "The Basketball Diaries" -- and I could barely eat for 24 hours because they were so loaded with violence," Redford told Interview Magazine.

Redford, who founded the festival in 1981 to showcase films that aren't made with studio money, said at the time that he hoped future festivals would not use violence and sex to sell tickets.

"There are too many films here that have token violence that's appealing to the commerciality of the marketplace. That's when I said, `Let's be aggressive about finding edgier, more experimental, riskier films that just don't depend on it.'"

Well, by the time his 1999 festival is finished, Redford may never be able to eat again: This year several Sundance films take new looks at porn and cannibalism!

The horses are more than whispering over this year's Sundance lineup.

The hottest tickets, not coincidentally, are for the most risque films. There is "American Pimp," which looks at the lowlifes who oversee the underworld of prostitution.

And then there is sex: "The Annabel Chong Story." Its subject set a record by having sex with 251 men over a 10-hour period -- and she captured it all on film!

But something called "Ravenous," which had its world premier at Sundance over the weekend, may be the most unsavory course of all.

Set in a snowbound California of the 19th century, the film gives new meaning to the phrase "You are what you eat."

"Robert Carlisle of `The Full Monty' stars as a mysterious frontiersman who likes nothing better than to serve his fellow man -- preferably medium rare," reports freaked-out Dallas Morning News critic Chris Vognar.

And Redford said he felt like puking during "The Basketball Diaries"? -- Drudge Report

~Gary Rust is president of Rust Communications, which owns the Southeast Missourian and other newspapers.