Smart leaders may become wise leaders when they have the foresight or courage to make unpopular and counter-intuitive decisions.

Here are seven leaders who broke classic business rules in order to benefit their company or community--and demonstrated wise leadership capabilities in the process.

Turn your best people into beginners.

(Read More: Killing the 'Sacred Cows' That Are Killing Your Company)

Conversations are the lifeblood of business. Whether selling, pitching, communicating a strategy, dealing with a customer service issue, working an idea, sending an email to a colleague, or tweeting; you are having a conversation. How you have those conversations and how effectively you have them are critical to your success as a leader.

In our work — which spans CEO's and senior executives in F50 companies, leaders of transformation initiatives, to struggling visionaries and entrepreneurs driving growth — we see three common pitfalls which trip up a leader's ability to have effective conversations.

Mistake #1. Not facing into reality.

(Read More: Wait! What? Why We Get 'Sidetracked' and Veer Off Course)

Let's face it, we have a disconnect that is killing us. It's as simple as this: many, many jobs in this country have gone away and they are likely to never come back. And, the way we are currently going about finding work is not yielding new jobs for these people.

We talk a lot about parts of the process that are important to success. Great resumes, cover letters, interviewing tips. Books and workshops abound and experts are on every corner telling us that if we would just pull the right levers, then 1-2-3, we'll have work. But if that was all it took to get a job, then everyone who wants one would have one, right? Instead, we have millions of people who have just given up.

I know. I was one of those people not so long ago. I bought the books, listened to the experts, went to workshops, networked until I couldn't network any more. I had reams of cards and little slips of paper from those events with phone numbers and information that I quite honestly didn't know how to use.

(Read More: The Robot Reality: Service Jobs Are Next to Go)

Guest Author Blog by Jeremy Kingsley author of "Inspired People Produce Results - How Great Leaders Use Passion, Purpose, and Principles to Unlock Incredible Growth,"

Lack of loyalty is a serious problem in organizations everywhere today.

No longer do people join a company and devote the rest of their working lives to it. Companies are, of course, not exactly known for offering up thirty or forty years of employment, a gold watch and pension plan.

Times have changed. Businesses appear and disappear at a dizzying pace. So do the jobs they offer. Organizations preoccupied with short-term, bottom line thinking often view their employees as little more than resources to be hired, fired, and manipulated as the need arises. Workers are naturally less happy on the job when they sense little or no loyalty from their employer.

Both sides pay a price for this lack of loyalty. What can you do to avoid this terrifying outcome? Learn from others.

(Read More: Hope Makes Workers More Productive)

Are the people who pay for goods and services "Customers," "Patients," "Students," "Residents," or "Guests?"

Are the people working in an organization "Associates," "Team Members," "Partners," "Employees or "Cast Members"?

The debate about how to best address customers and employees consumes valuable time, energy and money in many organizations. Yet, merely changing nouns or verbs won't ensure a culture dedicated to world class customer service or create a motivated and engaged workforce.

(Read More: Killing the 'Sacred Cows' That Are Killing Your Company)

Cultural etiquette, politeness, and good manners are passed down through societies from generation to generation.

Etiquette refers to the cultural guidelines for what is appropriate or inappropriate and polite or impolite. It gives a culture structure, integrity, grace, and finesse—all of which are uniquely adapted from one culture to another.

Fortunately, simple business and social etiquette are often based on basic common sense. Although etiquette styles and fads may come and go, the fundamentals of global etiquette remain essentially the same.

Guest Author Blog by Jake Breeden author of, "Tipping Sacred Cows: Kick the Bad Work Habits that Masquerade as Virtues."

Sometimes collaboration hides a lack of accountability and balance masks an unwillingness to make a decision. Collaboration and balance are two virtues that can combine to cover up some nasty virtues. Leaders must take a hard look at the virtues they are proud of to make sure no vice lurks within.

Guest Author Blog by Debra Kaye author of book, "Red Thread Thinking: Weaving Together Connections for Brilliant Ideas and Profitable Innovation,"

How many times have you thought, "I wish I'd thought of that!" or wanted to know how to successfully connect to a winning concept? Great innovators create new ideas by making connections between seemingly unrelated experiences and observations to uncover surprising, unique insights. Now you can have the genius quotient, too.

My new book, "Red Thread Thinking: Weaving Together Connections for Brilliant Ideas and Profitable Innovation," proves insights are no accident. It helps you tap into your own resources and knowledge to help create big, successful, fresh ideas or improve on existing ones.

Here are just five examples.

American salespeople, Swiss mechanics, and Chinese factory workers all are more productive if they are hopeful.

In an effort to learn more about the universality and nature of the hope-productivity link, I worked with a team of researchers to meta-analyze more than fifty studies on hope and work.

We were able to quantify hope's contribution to productivity. Other conditions being equal, hope leads to a 14% bump in workplace outcomes. Drawing upon my research and findings from studies around the world, I found that there are five characteristics of hopeful employees that make them more productive than other people.

GUEST AUTHOR BLOG by Francesca Gino author of "Sidetracked: Why Our Decisions Get Derailed, and How We Can Stick to the Plan."

I know of a product manager working for a software start-up who spent many hours preparing for an important meeting. His goal was to gather his team's opinions on what features to include in the new release of the company's software product.

During the meeting, however, the product manager showed such enthusiasm for his own plan of action that his team members assumed he was unwilling to listen to their ideas.

His strong confidence sidetracked him from his initial plan of welcoming the team's suggestions.

(Read More: Are You Cursed by Your Own Success?)