Reddish incentive placed before your leader (7)
I believe the answer is:
carroty
'reddish' is the definition.
Although both the answer and definition are adjectives, I don't understand how one could define the other.
'incentive placed before your leader' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'incentive' could be 'carrot' (as in a carrot and stick) and 'carrot' is located in the answer.
A single letter 'y' remains which might be clued in a way I don't understand.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Another definition for carroty that I've seen is " with red hair?".)