Glossary
The terms the Principles use, each with a short definition you can cite and the source it comes from.
- Good leadership
- Leading well means exceeding goals by growing people. The two halves go together: the second is the cause of the first. Learn more
- Good governance
- The rules, bodies, and practices an organization uses to decide what must be protected, decided, and overseen, so that its direction is legitimate and sustainable. [1][21] Learn more
- Governance, management, and leadership
- Three different questions that the same person often answers. Governance decides what is protected and overseen; management, how resources and execution are organized; leadership, how people’s judgment and behavior are mobilized. [1]
- Leadership debt
- The gap that builds up between the leadership an organization needs to deliver on what it has set out to do and the leadership its systems and its leaders actually produce. It is an interpretation, not yet validated by research. [1]
- Psychological safety
- A team’s shared belief that people can take interpersonal risks, such as asking a question, disagreeing, or admitting a mistake, without being punished for it. [4] Learn more
- Coordinate, cooperate, and collaborate
- To coordinate is to adjust what you do. To cooperate is to divide up the work. To collaborate is to make the other person more capable: to contribute to others achieving shared goals or their own. [9] Learn more
- Governing body
- Whoever is ultimately accountable for an organization: the board of directors or, in organizations without a board, whoever leads them. [13] Learn more
- Endorsement
- The public commitment, by a person or an organization, to practice the Principles of Good Leadership. It is free and is renewed every year. Learn more
- Endorser seal
- The emblem given to those who endorse. It signals a public commitment and does not certify compliance. Learn more