Steps toward a theory of leadership must blend needed change with appropriate strategies for implementation. Discussions of leadership must begin with the concept of empowerment, since all leaders are empowerers. The theory that drives empowerment is the theory of individual differences, here based on C. G. Jung's ideas of four main personality styles along dimensions of perception (sensation/intuition) and judgment (thinking/feeling). A starting place is for leaders to understand individual differences and personality styles. To be an empowerer, individual assets and liabilities must first be acknowledged, named, and accepted. The empowerer then needs to relate the powers and liabilities of each colleague to the requirements of the task to be completed. Next it is useful to understand the four ways a leader's power exercises itself, as a dimension of the four main personality styles. Attitudes toward conflict are affected by these personality styles, modified by attitudes of extraversion or introversion. Finally, the leader must identify a group's oral culture, adopting the style and talk of a particular group in order to affirm its values and bring it into a process of group problem-solving. This theory of leadership assumes that individuals and groups are neither right nor wrong, moral or amoral, but rather, sets of dependencies, and that leadership consists of effectively challenging colleagues to their fuller human potential. (Three tables are included and a typological glossary is attached.) (SR)