Fifteen ‘Leadership’ traits you were never taught

Judging by the number of training and coaching available on the subject of ‘leadership’, it appears that we tend to treat leadership as some kind of technique.

Nothing can be further from the truth.

Leadership is not a technique. It is a way of life. You lead your personal and family life. You may lead as a manager or a business owner. You may even be called upon to lead the highest office in the land. You cannot assemble a bunch of techniques and become a leader. You become a leader by making it a way of life. Otherwise you become a ‘do as I say but not as I do’ type of pseudo leader.

Dictionaries struggle to define leadership. If you ask different people to define leadership, it is very likely you will get various leadership “personas” described to you.

A person is NOT a leader because of their position, title or they think they are the leader.

Below are fifteen traits of great leaders:

1. Leaders lead people. Leadership starts with him or herself. Challenge of leadership is to get people to willingly do what they would normally NOT do.
2. Competence: Competence is just the starting point. A leader builds his leadership starting with competence. This will involve learning new skills and training for a level of competency. Remember there are very competent people who are very poor leaders.
3. Character: This involves sense of duty, ethics, value systems, integrity and morality and so on. Highly competent leaders fail not because of incompetence but lack of character.
4. Respected: Leaders make tough choices and decisions all the time. They are NOT there to be loved. But their competence and character decides how well they are respected.
5. Make things happen and take responsibility for their own actions of their team and organization.
6. Leaders delegate authority and NOT responsibility. By delegating authority to the front line, great leaders can remain focused on the big picture. However, they also know that the buck stops with them.
7. Leaders really understand the ‘WHY’ of their crusade. See the video below:
   
8. Leaders set high standards for themselves. This high standard is NOT a goal to be reached at a later date. It is something they live and breathe every day.
9. Great leaders understand the significance of competitive forces outside their control. This allows them to pick the right playing field.
10. Leadership is a strategist. They understand the close, ongoing relationship between leadership and strategy.
11. Leaders also understand that strategy is not a destination or solution. It is not a problem to be solved. It is a continuous journey.
12. Leaders focus on standard of conduct. They do this by committing to absolute values. They commit to their journey with all their might.
13. True leaders commit to a single standard. For an example they don’t have one standard for private morality and conduct and another for public morality and conduct. They will NOT accept lower standards to get things done. They do not buy in to the doctrine of expediency – the double standard of conduct.
14. Leaders who start something new, like a new movement are not afraid to make a fool of themselves in order to grow that movement.
    
15. Great leaders know that no organization will get better until the leadership is willing to admit that something is wrong.

• They see the problem for what it is and NOT worse than it is.
• Once they see the problem for what it is, they see the future as better than it is now. That is they create a compelling vision.
• They do everything in their power to start living the vision now, as if their vision has already come to fruition.

Here is a question:

If someone achieves a great goal by any means – by lowering their standards – would you consider them a great leader?

Tagged as: leadership