Kim Kind meets some bosses with the "it" factor and the workers who stick with them.

In 2008, Amanda Lacaze was the chief executive of troubled telecommunications company Commander and had the unenviable task of telling employees that despite their best efforts, the company was heading into voluntary administration.

"It was the best and the worst year of my life," says Lacaze, who had, in her attempt to save the business, required her team to "work harder than they had ever worked before in their lives".

As Lacaze left Commander's headquarters for the last time, the staff formed an honour guard and threw fresh rose petals at her feet.

This extraordinary act of admiration, affection and respect exemplifies the intense loyalty Lacaze has attracted repeatedly throughout her career. She has become a kind of corporate Pied Piper, collecting talented people and taking them with her as she moves from role to role.

One of those followers is a senior technology director, Alistair Carwardine, 48, who has worked for Lacaze in three companies and was part of the rose-petal brigade.

"The reason that I keep coming back to work for Amanda is because she's not just a manager, she's a leader," he says.

"Amanda is able to give me a lot more confidence to do things that, ordinarily, I wouldn't feel confident to take on. And as much as she pushes people to work hard, she's also very caring. Because of that respect and care, it's reciprocated and it becomes a cultural imperative of the places where she works," Carwardine says. "I think it's a reasonably rare art. Lots of managers exist in the corporate world, not so many leaders."

Carwardine is right. Associate Professor Peter Miller, of the Southern Cross University Business School, has taught leadership for 20 years and is the co-author of The Leader in You - Developing Your Leadership Potential.

He says research shows that two out of every 10 managers actually know how to lead and, according to a recent study by Aon Hewitt, only half of the 170,000 workers surveyed in Australia and New Zealand consider their managers effective leaders.

"People don't want to be managed these days, they want to be lead and leadership is rare," says Miller, who believes it is one of the reasons so many employees report being disengaged with work.

Employees are underwhelmed by management and are going through the motions, which is hardly a recipe for success.

Miller says genuine leaders are authentic and true to their values, can build trust, illustrate their vision and engage with their employees through communication and role-modelling.

Lacaze leads by example. "If I'm the boss, I don't expect anyone else in the business to work as hard as me," she says.

"People in the workplace understand ... the difference between what you do and what you say and they will not reward you if you're not authentic and if you don't act the way that you expect them to act."

Now a principal of her own consultancy, MLC Consulting, Lacaze says people recognise authenticity and can tell if someone is listening to them as a token gesture or because they really want to know what they think.

"You actually need to be engaging with people and you need to spend time talking with them ... I really listen to them," she says.

Lacaze attracts loyalty because she creates winning teams and publicly recognises good work but she also gets obvious joy from seeing her staff flourish and develop. It's a key component of the kind of leader people want to follow, according to Miller.

"A good leader knows their people and that every individual will be motivated by different things and they try and provide those things," he says.

"Difficult work assignments are a part of the way leaders give their people development opportunity."

Lacaze agrees. "I make sure that I provide people with challenges - ones where I know they can succeed.

"If I can see someone achieve something that they wouldn't otherwise be able to do, there is no greater reward for me."

Lacaze says trust is the cornerstone of successful working relationships and Miller agrees.

"Leaders know how to build trust in the people that they work with; managers don't," he says.

Trust comes from integrity, consistent behaviour and by standing behind team members when they make mistakes.

Elizabeth Vitale, a 31-year-old licensing manager, says trust is one of the many reasons she followed her boss, James Ashworth, from the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games in 1998, to sports-management company IMG, to Ashworth's own business, Velocity Brand Management, where she now works.

"He leads you in the right direction but lets you make your own mistakes," Vitale says.