Leadership - A discussion of traits, characteristics, and current news of leaders.

I ran into Dr. Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google Inc. (GOOG), in the restroom yesterday.  He had just given the keynote address at the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose. Seeing him in this context was a reminder that he is human like the rest of us.

It was a nice reminder, because as CEO of Google, Schmidt is clearly the most powerful person on the Internet and may be one of the most powerful and influential business leaders in the world.

Think about it. In addition to running a company that has a market capitalization of $113 billion, Google has changed the way we use the Internet. It handles nearly half of the world's Web searches and has single-handedly resurrected web advertising. That is a huge responsibility as a leader.

Is Yahoo Chairman and CEO Terry Semel screaming Yahoo?

Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) announced yesterday that its board of directors has reduced Semel's annual salary from $600,000 to $1. Yes, rub your eyes and do a double take - it says $1, one, uno, one hundred pennies. Semel trades his cash for an increase in his overall future compensation through grants of stock options.

This isn’t some publicity stunt (well maybe). Yahoo’s long-term executive retention plan has Semel sticking to this plan of $1 per year for the next three years through 2008. Before the tears start, let me add that Semel received an option to purchase 6 million shares of Yahoo.  So an increase in Yahoo's share price of a few dollars and the Yahoo executive will be back flying first class.

In 2004, Google Inc. (GOOG), Yahoo's biggest rival instituted this same deal in 2004 for its co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and CEO Eric Schmidt (all billionaires).

Post Enron, maybe we will see more Boards actually provide leadership, hold executives accountable and align their compensation with that of other stakeholders.

Read more at the Washington Post and the Truth on the Market.