Top leaders share certain crafty talents

— -- Every day is judgment day for the best leaders. That's the major take-away from Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls.

It's crucial to make sound judgments in three areas:

•People. Hiring, placement, development and firing, CEO succession.

•Strategy. Where your organization is going and how it gets there.

•Dealing with crisis. Which inevitably comes when least expected.

As for key leadership qualities, leaders are:

•Teachers. Tichy calls this a TPOV (Teachable Point of View). Welch was a master teacher as CEO of General Electric, including when Tichy ran the company's fabled leadership center in Crotonville, N.Y. Strong leaders guide others to value their own roles as teachers.

•Self-aware. The leaders "seemed to have overcome whatever [sometimes self-imposed] impediments stood in their way. Most of those impediments were dissolved by a regular, ruthless self-scrutiny."