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Being a leader is about living your life in a way that inspires or encourages others. To lead is to serve. If you make it your goal to do the best that you can and to help people, then you can't fail. I encourage you to commit to keep learning.
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| Characteristics of a Leader |
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| Leaders shouldn’t frequently change their minds after a major decision, but if they never do, they show rigidity and inflexibility, which could be a problem. |
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Here's a summary of some key characteristics we consider defining for an effective leader. Use it as a checklist for how you feel about your current skills and which of those you feel need to be improved.
BE as Many of the Following as Possible:
1. Trusting. It’s essential for you to be able to trust those you’re leading (supervising, directing, and so on). This trust needs to be balanced with a willingness to identify people who’ve proven they can’t be trusted to make some tough decisions and remove them, or minimize their negative impact on the goal(s) of the group. Without trust and mutual respect among leaders and followers (subordinates), a group (organization) will often suffer from a combination of low performance and poor morale.
2. Visible and Approachable. Some organizations find the application of the four-hour rule a useful guideline. This guideline recommends that leaders should spend no more than four hours a day in their offices. The rest of the time, they should be out with their people. They should be talking with people engaged in production, and with customers to directly obtain their recommendations and comments on problem areas. They should be patting people on the back, making short informal speeches, and handing out awards. They should be traveling widely throughout their spheres of influence, and they should be making contact with other key organizations and influencing personnel to ensure that relationships are enhanced and problem areas identified early.
3. Decisive—But Patiently Decisive. Leaders should listen to all sides before making a decision. A decisive leader is an effective leader; an impulsive leader is rarely effective. However, postponing a decision for many weeks or months is rarely a productive tactic. A non-decision is in itself a decision and should be recognized as such. Risk-taking is frequently an unavoidable essential and healthy aspect of decision-making. Leaders should understand how to implement decisions. They must ensure that decisions aren’t only carried out but also carried out faithfully in both substance and spirit. While agreement isn’t always obtainable, acceptance and willing compliance are a must.
4. Introspective. Leaders should be able to look at themselves objectively and analyze where they’ve made mistakes, where they’ve turned people off, and where they’ve headed down the wrong path.
5. Reliable. Reliability is something leaders must have in order to provide stability and strength to the group. Be careful about what commitments are made, but once those commitments are firm, nothing should stop you from honoring them unless they’re renegotiated. Important elements of reliability are persistence and consistency. Leaders must be willing to be flexible, but consistency and persistence are important elements of positive leadership.
6. Principled. Work ethics are the principals by which you conduct yourself on the job. Leaders shouldn’t just talk about integrity, they must practice it. Integrity shouldn’t lie dormant until a crisis occurs; it must be ingrained and nurtured by the entire group. Of all the qualities a leader must have, integrity is the most important.
7. Open-minded. The best leaders are those whose minds are never closed and who are eager to view issues from the vantage point or the perspective of others. Leaders shouldn’t frequently change their minds after a major decision has been made, but if they never do so, they’re beginning to show a degree of rigidity and inflexibility that can spell trouble for the group.
8. Dignified. When standards of dignity are established and routinely emphasized, everyone can take pride in both the accomplishments and the stylistic image of the group. A happy combination of substance and style leads to high performance and morale.
9. Healthy and Fit. The demands of leadership are very heavy, and no matter how well you might plan your schedule, there’ll be times when the pressures and demands will be oppressive. A physical fitness program can help you be prepared for those difficult periods that occur in leadership roles.
10. Technically Savvy. Leaders must not only understand the major elements of the group with which they’re involved, they must also keep up with changes. If a leader has a high level of technical competence, then they should be able to trust their intuition. This combination of competence and intuition can be an extremely powerful tool.
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The above content is extracted from Mike Holt's Leadership Skills textbook.
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