Between September 10 and 12, 2009, the World Economic Forum's (WEF's) third annual meeting of the New Champions brought together in Dalian (China), CEOs, policy-makers, academics, and scientists from all over the world. The Summer Davos, as the Chinese insist on calling the conference, focuses on developing countries and fast growing companies although senior executives from multinational corporations don't miss the opportunity to rub shoulders with counterparts from the developing world.

This year's theme, Relaunching Growth, seemed almost redundant. The crowd at the opening session was less worried about the global economy than it had been a year ago. Even my banker friends stayed the entire evening without disappearing to put out fires over their handhelds &#8212 as they had last year.

The opening speech by China's premier, Wen Jiabao, was triumphant rather than defiant. "This unprecedented global financial crisis has taken a heavy toll on the Chinese economy," he said, adding that China has risen to the challenge. He reminded the audience of the size of the Chinese government's stimulus, its new economic policies, the jobs created.... He assured us that China had halted the global downturn.

For many in the audience, the encouraging economic statistics on display proved once again the wisdom of China's ways. Did anyone, other than WEF founder Klaus Schwab, doubt that China would meet its 2009 growth target of 8%?

The Dalian meeting also saw the unveiling of the WEF's Global Competitiveness Report, a ranking of an economy's business climate calculated from both publicly available data as well as an annual survey conducted by the WEF and its partners. The United States ceased to be number one; Switzerland took its place. China moved up from No. 30 to No. 29 and one participant boldly predicted that by 2030, China would become the largest economy in the world. Why not? Certainly champions both old and new have turned to China for growth. If you can't beat them, join them, pointed out a friend of mine from North Africa, eager to do business in China.

Despite the celebratory air, I did hear one Chinese participant deviate from the party line. Perhaps investment isn't the best use for fiscal stimulus. Perhaps excess credit isn't such a good idea. Perhaps excess supply could potentially hurt China's recovery and that of the world, he said. Perhaps I was the only one paying attention to his comments. Does it matter that, according to several estimates, 88% of China's growth this year is because of fixed investment? Everyone assumes that China will keep growing--but that has never been true of any country.

Construction is costless in China. The lines of semi-finished buildings never seem to end. There is a surreal feeling of over-capacity everywhere. Once day, I visited a software company housed in a castle-like building that would have made Louis XIV envious.

In Dalian, a small, but beautiful coastal city, we wondered if the colossal conference center is used regularly and if the lights were ever turned on in the city's innumerable skyscrapers. Apart from the city's neon signs, nights in Dalian are oddly dark. Were its residents told not to turn on lights so the city's poverty stayed hidden as long as the WEF was in town? We'll never know. (Dalian's karaoke bars were kept closed during the meeting, I heard. I will never understand why). Still, the world came together to pay its annual tribute to its new champion economy: China.

Laura Alfaro is an associate professor at the Harvard Business School in Boston

The world doesn't need another leadership theory. On Amazon, there are 480,881 books today that have to do with leaders as the topic. If you ask 30 leadership development experts to define leadership, you get 31 different answers. No wonder we're confused.

This is a problem when trying to develop effective leaders- everyone has a different opinion and there's no right answer. Progress can only be made when there's agreement about what we're trying to develop leaders to do.

I was in a meeting recently with a group of senior executives from the same company and started with the question: "What are qualities of effective leaders?" Here's a partial list of their responses:

• Authentic
• Transparent
• Emotional intelligence
• Interpersonal effectiveness
• Servant-leader
• Humility
• Leaders not managers
• Know contingency theory by mapping response to situation
• Live the 7 Habits
• Build a vision
• Ensure customer centricity

And so on.

In other words, they had no clue. They could make a list but they did not have a point of view.

Dave Ulrich and I (along with our colleague Kate Sweetman) determined to synthesize this morass of ideas. We turned to recognized experts in the field who had already spent years sifting through the evidence and asked two simple but elusive questions:

1. What percentage of effective leadership traits are basically the same?
2. If there are common rules that all leaders must master, what are they?

Our respondents agreed that 60-70% of leadership is common for any effective leaders - from a bootstrapping entrepreneur to a leader at a large organization. By synthesizing their work we identified five rules to decode leadership:

Rule 1: Shape the future. This rule is embodied in the strategist dimension of the leader. Strategists answer the question "where are we going?" and make sure that those around them understand the direction as well.

Rule 2: Make things happen. Turn what you know into what you do. The Executor dimension of the leader focuses on the question "How will we make sure we get to where we are going?"

Rule 3: Engage today's talent. Leaders who optimize talent today answer the question "Who goes with us on our business journey?" Talent managers know how to identify, build and engage talent to get results now.

Rule 4: Build the next generation. Leaders who develop the next generation answer the question, "who stays and sustains the organization for the next generation?" Talent Managers ensure shorter-term results through people while Next Generation Developers ensure that the organization has the longer-term competencies required for future strategic success.

Rule 5: Invest in yourself. At the heart of this Leadership Code - literally and figuratively - is Personal Proficiency. Effective leaders cannot be reduced to what they know and do. Who they are as human beings has everything to do with how much they can accomplish with and through other people.

This "Leadership Code" allows leadership development people to stop circling the drain by reinventing competency models that are essentially the same. It provides a grounded point of view about the fundamentals. Future time, energy and attention can be applied to figuring out the other 30% about what makes our leaders unique and how to build a deeper bench of qualified leaders at every level.

Norm Smallwood is the cofounder of The RBL Group and coauthor of The Leadership Code

I've written before about how the "cold call" email can leave the recipient feeling, well, cold. Below is a guest post from Nadia Nassif on the topic from the international perspective.

I work predominantly with international folks grappling with English. Often their well-meaning intentions are buried by grammatical errors and a lack of awareness of the context of culture — either understanding mine or expecting I will know theirs.

But sometimes the problem is that the writer comes across as insincere and impersonal. Here's an example that was sent to me recently:

From: Sridar Patel

Subject: Make your site work harder!!!

Hi, Nadia

I noticed you recently made major work and revision to your current website. First, congratulation! This is good indication that your firm is excelling and doing well. I also see you did most right things by connecting your site to LinkedIn, Twitter, and many other important social media sites.

But, Nadia, these efforts maybe not enough! Technology is demanding new changes every day. It's not enough to be "tech-savvy" but innovator, too. Companies that do not adopt interactive and multimedia platforms will be left behind.

Vashwar Technologies is market leader in IT solutions. We offer our clients a broad range of services...

In all fairness, email communication is the primary mode of 1st-contact communication and using shared platforms such as LinkedIn to reach people is no secret in the business world. Sridar has at least come this far.

If you are like me, however, you would have stopped reading after the first paragraph. It's unnecessarily long, grammatically unpolished, and most important: it's primarily about the sender, not about me.

If Sridar really had something I needed, I would never know. To give him that chance, let's try a re-write:

From: Sridar Patel

Subject: Some Personal Observations About Your Web Site

Dear Nadia,

My name is Sridar, Owner of Vashwar Technologies, and I'm writing to you as a fellow member from the SMART IT Professionals Group on LinkedIn. I noticed you recently said that you were having your site redeveloped so I took a look.I liked the clean flow of your new design, but noticed that you do not have dynamic content.

Have you ever thought of embedding an educational video for your site, or an interactive quiz? Based on your services and target market, these or other dynamic content might help drive sales. Since I work with companies to create exactly this kind of material, I have attached an in-depth white paper that discusses their value.

If you are interested, I would be glad to set up a time to talk with you about some of the steps you could take to improve your PageRank and site user experience.

Best regards,
Sridar

This is better because it has:

Personalization and context: He explains that he has looked at my site and what brought him to it.

Focus: The emphasis is on the value for me. This makes it worth reading.

A call to action: He suggests I contact him to set up a call. Juxtapose this self-confident approach with the desperate overtones of the first email.

Clear language: It's well written and error free. This says he took the time to care, which makes me feel more respected.

Now let's just hope the Nigerian oil executives aren't reading too closely about how to make more effective use of email.

What do you think? Is Nadia giving to much information about how to write a good cold call email? Is there any hope that the salespeople of the world will hesitate before pressing "send" to really do their research?

Want to demonstrate that you have what it takes to be an effective leader and have people follow your direction?

Be humble!

That lesson echoed with me as I read a David Brooks column in the New York Times in which he describes listening to an archival recording of "Command Performance," a radio variety show originally broadcast on V-J Day. Celebrities abounded but according to Brooks, "the most striking feature of the show was its tone of self-effacement and humility." Victory was welcome but marked with dignity.

Leaders who want to inspire followership, and I use the word "inspire" deliberately, need to demonstrate not simply their accomplishments but their character. Take pride in what you have done, but use it as a platform to bring people together to do greater things, e.g. increase sales, improve quality, or save the planet. Use your leadership for something other than self-aggrandizement.

A sense of humility is essential to leadership because it authenticates a person's humanity. We humans are frail creatures; we have our faults. Recognizing what we do well, as well as what we do not do so well, is vital to self-awareness and paramount to humility. Here are some ways to demonstrate humility in the workplace.

Temper authority. Power comes with rank but you don't have to pull it to make it work for you. You can encourage others to make decisions by delegating authority and responsibility. Encourage your people to write their own performance objectives and set team goals. Allow them to make decisions. Your authority comes in the form of imposing order and discipline.

Look to promote others. Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman note in their seminal text, First, Break All the Rules, that a characteristic of successful managers is their ability to promote others, sometimes to positions higher than their own. Such managers are talent groomers, they are ones upon whose leadership success of the enterprise rests.

Acknowledge what others do. Few have said it better than legendary Alabama coach, Paul "Bear" Bryant. "If anything goes bad, I did it. If anything goes semi-good, we did it. If anything goes really good, then you did it. That's all it takes to get people to win football games for you." Practice that attitude always, especially when things are not going well, and your team will rally together because they want you to succeed. In short, humility breeds humility.

Can you be too humble in the workplace? Yes. If you fail to put yourself, or more importantly your ideas, forward, you will be overlooked. Chances for promotion will evaporate, but worse you will not give anyone a reason to believe in you. All of us need not lead others, but those who do seek to influence, to change, to guide, and to lead their organizations, need to find ways to get noticed. Again humility comes to the rescue. That is, if you celebrate team first, self second, people will notice what you and your team have achieved.

And once more, let me return to Brook's column in which he cites a passage from Ernie Pyle who had been killed in action in the Pacific months before in anticipation of victory. "We won this war because our men are brave and because of many things — because of Russia, England and China and the passage of time and the gift of nature's material. We did not win it because destiny created us better than all other peoples."

In today's corporate speak we might say we had a diverse team with ample resources and we are thankful for the opportunity to compete. But I prefer Pyle's closing admonishment. "I hope that we are more grateful than we are proud."