5 leadership lessons from Elton John

Oscar winner and five time Grammy award winner, Reginald Kenneth Dwight, better known as singer, composer and AIDS awareness campaigner, Elton John, delves into his life's lessons to share leadership mantras. John, along with Cate Blanchett and Shah Rukh Khan, will receive the Crystal Award at WEF 2018.
The first lesson, he says, is to find and follow a passion.
"I discovered my love of music when I was three years old. The first time I heard Elvis Presley I knew that was what I wanted to do. My passion arrived fully-formed."

There is never a straight line to success.
"My father, for example, thought that pursuing a career in music was an outrageous, unacceptable thing to do. But I wasn't to be deterred. I stuck at it and I found that I loved it. It offered joy and material abundance beyond my wildest dreams."

A good leader has a moral integrity that survives both success and failure.
"Fame, which at first sight looks like a blessing, soon revealed itself as also a curse. I am afraid I reacted very badly. I became a loathsome person - selfish, self-centred, and disconnected."

The future is always in your hands.
"It was at my lowest point that I had the great good fortune to meet Ryan White and his mother Jeanne. Ryan had contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion and, to compound that pain, he had been treated with savagery by society, the reactions to his condition ranging from nasty indifference to vicious contempt. I read about Ryan's disease, the way he and his family were suffering, and I was outraged."

Leaders have the ability to cope with real adversity.
"Ryan White was the spark that helped me recover from my addictions. It was the crucial lesson he taught me that led me to start the Elton John AIDS Foundation."

Source: World Economic Forum