Leadership Potential...

So how does adcom measure the leadership potential of a candidate?

Excuse me for my ignorance but I am very confused. I believe leaders and managers (especially middle managers) are two contradictory things. Leaders have strong emotional connection to their goals, they inspire the followers with their ideology, they think in long term to make sure that solutions will have a long lasting impact on their organization. Middle managers want to meet the deadline with moderate quality. They don't inspire their sub-ordinates rather their goal is to make sure that job is done on time and upper management is happy. They don't have a long term vision as their goal is to get the work done. Leaders are selfless people whose priority is their organization. Managers look for themselves first, trying to find a way to ensure teh safety of their jobs. Leaders may sacrifice themselevs for meeting their goals, managers sacrifice their subordinates.

While most of the MBA grads will start their career as middle managers, I don't think that you actually need to have leadership qualities to be a manager. You need to know how to drive the people , with fear of losing their job or award for performance or just a feeling of working in a good team.