TRAITS OF A TRUE LEADER
Summing up leadership into one “most important trait” is not possible. Being an effective leader is a cocktail of traits, one ingredient is not enough to bake the perfect cake. If you want to be an effective leader you must reach deep into your soul to discover your greatest qualities, your odd quirks, and charisma crushing habits.
Ask yourself why you want to be a leader. Why do you want to lead people? If you break it down and discover ego is the driving force, you are entering a journey you will not enjoy. Leadership is about humility and doing what must be done to achieve a goal. It is a challenging road saturated with incredible discomfort, pain, and anguish. To guide your team you must cut out your ego and focus on the end goal.
HAVE EMPATHY, YOU ARE NOT A ROBOT
Most get hung up on this focus and fail to empathize with their team. They become robotic and try to be a cold, calculating machine. This is one of the worst pitfalls of any aspiring leader. A true leader is genuine, compassionate, empathetic, patient and most of all, willing to be vulnerable. People are not robots, and they don’t want to follow one. If you sell yourself as perfect, your team will hold you to it. When you make a mistake they will burn you for it.
If you show compassion, understanding and humility they will return it in favor. However, this doesn’t mean they will give equal amounts. A good leader knows the limitations of their team and is aware they will always hold the leader to a higher standard. Great leaders remain aware of the social equity they have built with each team member, so pay attention to what you have built, where the cracks in the foundation are, and who will be a snake in the weeds.
YOU MUST HAVE GRIT
To be an incredible leader you must have grit. No matter how challenging your tasks become you must push forward. We want the people who lead us to be strong, aware, and persistent. If they see weakness in you, if you appear to be blind, and unwilling to push forward when times get turbulent they will leave you. Be strong but remember to hold tightly onto your humanity.
YOU MUST BE CREATIVE
Leaders must be creative. Don’t let yourself cling to old, outmoded ideas that no longer apply to the current market. If a square peg can’t fit into the hole, figure out a way to trim it down. Sometimes you might find yourself short on ideas, this is a great opportunity to build up your team. If you want to identify who is invested, reach out to them, and ask them for help. They will feel seen when you ask them for help and heard when you build upon their ideas.
INVEST IN YOUR TEAM
Foster a culture that promotes resourcefulness, investment, and passion. Give your team an opportunity to spread their wings. Allow them to influence their environment, and the world around you will begin to take shape. A good leader knows they must have people to lead, they also know they cannot micromanage everything. Give your followers a chance to make a significant change and they will start taking ownership of their environment.
So if I were forced to sum up the one essential trait of being a good leader, I’d say it was “leadership”
