Couple of points sent to a friend who asked for a checklist for ascertaining leadership qualities:

Ability to learn and adapt on the run: Leadership is 99% learning - people, tools, processes, skills and market realities. Once you know you are going to do something, then what stands between you and the actual doing is about how fast you can learn the skills that go into whatever it takes to hold it all together. If you do something right, improve it. If you do something wrong, catch it as early as possible and fix it. Rinse repeat. Apologize without fear or prejudice and thank every contributor personally.

Ability to take decisions: It is easy to decide between a good choice and a bad choice. What you really need to know as a leader is to be able to decide between two really bad choices with your back against the wall.

Ability to see the larger picture: If you can perceive why the sum of benefits from 12 sub-optimal choices can often easily be more than the sum of a highly optimized single choice and understand why the right choice is different from picture-to-picture, you are already half way there.

Ability to inspire people and share your learning: Teamwork is best explained in cycling. The sum of the parts is most often better than a single outstanding part. In fact, you can't win the Tour de France without a good team backing you. And every good team is an experience of endless give-and-take. But every team also has a leader who inspires the team and leads them to do things which they probably would not be able to do if they are on their own.

Ability to command respect: Respect is not fear. If you have to yell at people to make them understand what they should do, you've already failed as a leader. Not because you can't get work done, but because people are not giving you the best they can. Fear drives desperation and mediocrity, respect drives outstanding things.

Ability to maximize profits and cut losses: Profit, here, is not essentially a monetary thing. Profit here is any good that is a product of your actions. More importantly, you need to know when to cut losses and move on. You need to know the quantum at which you should give up on a failed product/person/approach.