Four Uncommon Leadership Qualities
Are you working in an organization where leaders model the characteristics of inspirational leadership? Do the leaders in your organization display personality traits that are conducive to success?
One of the most powerful questions one can ask is Am I working in a company where followers want to be led by their current leaders?? Inspirational leaders consistently demonstrate the characteristics that lead to successful leadership.
Are you a leader who has great leadership qualities? Are you able to create a high-performing workplace by creating a work environment where people are fully engaged and the workforce trusts leaders?
Everyone agrees that great leaders have vision, energy, authority, and good strategic direction. They must also have an enthusiastic following; Leadership requires skills to persuade others to commit to company goals and take initiatives determined by others.
In today’s work environment for Gen X and Millennial workers, it’s not that easy to commit empoweredpeople.
Despite all the leadership training workshops and despite the thousands of business books published each year, very few people can confidently explain how to take charge, engage others, and develop your leadership skills.
Why should someone be guided by you? It’s a great question, as well as the title of an excellent Harvard Business Review article from September and October 2000 co-authored by Robert Goffee and Gareth Jones. It is worth summarizing here.
four qualities
To inspire, leaders need four essential qualities in addition to vision and energy. These traits are probably not what you would expect, but they can be honed by those who are willing to dig deep to find their inner values.
Few executives begin the necessary personal development journey because it requires painful soul-searching and a challenge to our assumptions and beliefs. Not everyone wants to undertake such intense personal work with an executive coach or consultant. Those who do, however, significantly expand their repertoire of leadership skills.
Inspirational leaders share four unexpected qualities:
1. They selectively show their weaknesses. By exposing some vulnerability, exceptional leaders reveal their accessibility and humanity. The key is to be discerning and maintain a comfort level, while also recognizing the inherent risks.
2. They rely heavily on intuition to gauge the proper timing and course of their actions. Their ability to collect and interpret soft data helps them determine when and how to act.
3. They manage employees with tough empathy.Inspirational leaders passionately but realistically empathize with people, and care intensely about the work employees do.
4. They reveal their differences. Effective leaders capitalize on what is unique about themselves. Some in top positions may not have the right kind of unique qualities, or they don’t share them. As a consequence, they never get the necessary energetic following. Few people want to be led by them.
The focus here is not on financial results per se, but on how leaders capture the hearts, minds, and energy of those who report to them. Truly, great results are hard to come by without these qualities.
Working with an experienced executive coach trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating leadership assessments like the Bar-On EQ-i and CPI 260 can help you become an inspiring leader who displays the qualities of good leadership. He can become a leader who models emotional intelligence and inspires people to happily commit to the company’s strategy and vision.
