Rep. Michele Bachmann announced Wednesday that she will end her campaign for president. (AP)

And then there were six. Six white males, that is. With Herman Cain out of the race and Michele Bachmann officially standing aside—she announced she would do so at a press conference Wednesday morning after her last-place finish among the major contenders in Iowa—the GOP field is now noticeably lacking any diversity. All of the candidates are men. All of the hopefuls are white. And four of the six are over the age of 60.

There are many reasons Rick Santorum succeeded in virtually tying Mitt Romney in the Iowa caucus Tuesday night. After sifting through the slate of candidates, the state’s evangelical voters finally decided he paired well with their staunch social conservative views. His timing was good, getting his turn in the media spotlight just before votes were cast. He got endorsements from Jim Bob Duggar and Rupert Murdoch.

But what really earned Santorum his near-win, falling behind the frontrunner by just eight votes, was his old-fashioned shoe leather approach. With no polling operation in place, the former Pennsylvania senator worked his way through all 99 Iowa counties without a speech writer or security detail. He turned his speeches into town-hall style events that let him conduct his own first-hand focus groups. His campaign trail transportation? Not a tricked-out luxury coach or a fractional jet, but a Dodge pick-up truck.

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich campaigns in advance of the Iowa caucus on January 3. (Andrew Burton - GETTY IMAGES)

Anyone just returning after a long holiday break to news about Tuesday night’s Iowa caucuses is in for a surprise. Rick Santorum’s star — yes, Rick Santorum’s — has been rising. Ron Paul is in the Iowa polls’ top three, too. And Newt Gingrich, whose fortunes were peaking just before the holidays began, looks like he’s headed for lowly fourth place just weeks after it appeared he might run away with a win.

What happened? Santorum’s blue-collar bona fides have apparently won him new fans. Ron Paul’s movement picked up steam. And Newt Gingrich cried, didn’t run enough TV ads, and explained his position on climate control by calling himself an “amateur paleontologist.” (Guess being a historian wasn’t enough.) Most of all, however, Gingrich refused to go negative. He had promised to run a “respectful and constructive” campaign, and while many will argue whether he really did that or not, it appears to have hurt him more than it helped. “This will be the prevailing obituary for his campaign,” wrote The Fix blog. “He didn’t fight back and he wouldn’t go negative when it counted.”

Today’s leaders may not have the gravitas of Winston Churchill, the eloquence of Abraham Lincoln, or the wit of Mark Twain. To be candid, seemingly none of them do.

But that doesn’t mean they don’t say a few words now and then worth remembering to help inspire us in the year ahead. Sometimes they remind us about simple leadership truths that are all too easy to forget. Other times it’s what they said in the act of doing something courageous that puts our worlds into perspective. Even if you don’t agree with their politics, their practices or their celebrity, their words can help us think about how we might want leaders to lead in 2012.

It’s performance review season, and end-of-the-year articles are awash with advice for employees on how to make the best of them in this tough economy. Don’t be confrontational. Send your boss a succinct summary of the year’s accomplishments ahead of time. Follow up on how you’re responding to the feedback.  

But it’s not really employees who need to improve the performance review process. It’s leaders. This annual rite of passage may be designed to help meet organizational goals and assist with people’s careers, but it typically has the opposite effect, damaging morale, ramping up anxiety and being so comprehensive as to be meaningless. It’s the people designing the processes who need the advice, not the participants in them.