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Dec 13, 2023 · In this article, the author outlines the eight most essential leadership qualities, according to Harvard Business School professor Linda Hill, one of the world’s top experts on leadership.
- Overview
- 20 qualities of an effective leader
- How to improve your leadership skills
Whether you're leading a team or a meeting, developing and owning leadership skills can help you succeed at any stage in your career. Leadership skills include a combination of soft and technical skills, such as using your interpersonal skills to motivate your team or applying your technical knowledge to solve problems and complete tasks. Learning about the qualities of effective leaders can help you develop and apply these skills in your workplace.In this article, we discuss 20 qualities that make a leader great and offer tips on how to improve yours.Key takeaways:
•An effective leader possesses various qualities ranging from innovation, problem solving and a growth mindset to empathy and patience.
•Learning about these qualities can help leaders develop and apply these skills in the workplace, enabling them to motivate their teams and achieve their goals.
•Understanding preferred leadership styles, knowing their strengths and where they can improve and finding a mentor are ways leaders can improve their capabilities.
1. Accountability
Taking ownership of responsibilities and positive and negative outcomes is key to effective leadership. Leaders should be able to take responsibility for their team's work, as well as their own. This may involve apologizing for mistakes and developing new systems and processes to avoid errors in the future.Related: Defining Accountability in Management
2. Active listening
Successful leaders should be able to give, but also receive feedback from team members and listen. To actively listen, a leader can listen to the words being spoken but also understand the meaning behind them. You can practice active listening by minimizing distractions when having conversations, showing interest by using non-verbal cues and summarizing the speaker's words to show your understanding.
3. Collaboration
Often, leaders need to collaborate internally across departments and externally with vendors, third-party companies and contractors. It's important that they know how to find common goals and create partnerships for the most successful and mutually beneficial outcome. Good collaboration often involves prioritizing communication between parties to ensure your goals align and all participants understand your expectations.
1. Identify your leadership style
While you may use different leadership styles in different situations, it can be helpful to define how you want to lead your team, projects or meetings. Most professionals develop their own style of leadership based on factors like experience and personality, as well as the unique needs of their company and its organizational culture.For example, leaders in some industries offer their teams more autonomy than leaders in other industries. If you manage a team of creative professionals at an advertising company, you may offer more employee agency than the leader of an aerospace engineering team where technical precision is key to success.Read more: 10 Common Leadership Styles (Plus How To Find Your Own)
2. Define areas of strength and areas for improvement
Take time to consider which qualities you already have and which offer opportunities to improve. Asking for professional feedback from trusted colleagues or mentors can help you identify strengths and weaknesses you might have missed. Self-assessments can also help you learn how to use those strengths and weaknesses to benefit yourself, your employees and the workplace.
3. Find a mentor
Identify a person who you feel is a great leader and whose actions you'd like to imitate. You might consider someone from your childhood who was a role model for you, like a teacher, coach or band instructor.Ask them to be your mentor or find someone in an area that interests you. Use the opportunity to learn from them and adopt the qualities that make them effective. You can find mentors in your community through friends and family or even look up experts or alumni on professional networking sites.Read more: 24 Reasons Why Mentorship Is Important for Mentee and Mentor
Aug 18, 2024 · Jenn, a career coach, explains what leadership is, essential leadership behaviors, skills and styles, and how to identify the right approach for your workplace. Learn what qualities are best for becoming a strong team leader and how to develop these skills in the workplace.
- Drive. Great leaders aren’t passive. They’re highly motivated, and they truly believe in the vision of the organization. This passion is contagious. Employees with a driven leader are motivated to work harder themselves.
- Resilience. Being the one in charge isn’t easy. 37% of managers report that they felt a lot of stress on their most recent workday. But when you’re a leader, you can’t let the non-stop challenges dishearten you — adaptability and resiliency are key.
- Integrity. It’s essential for leaders to act with authenticity, honesty, integrity, and reliability. Employees need to know that a leader will behave ethically.
- A desire to learn. If you’re promoted into a leadership position, you probably already know a lot. You’ve developed your skills and gained experience in your field.
- Self-Awareness. While this is a more inwardly focused trait, self-awareness and humility are paramount qualities of leadership. The better you understand yourself and recognize your own strengths and weaknesses, the more effective you can be as a leader.
- Respect. Treating people with respect on a daily basis is one of the most important things a leader can do. It helps ease tensions and conflict, fosters trust, and improves your effectiveness.
- Compassion. Compassion is one of the most powerful and important acts of leadership. It’s more than simply showing empathy or even listening and seeking to understand — as compassion requires leaders to act on what they learn.
- Vision. Motivating others and garnering commitment are essential parts of leadership. Purpose-driven leaders ensure they connect their team’s daily tasks and the values of individual team members to the overall direction of the organization.
7. Presence. In order to stay open-minded you also need to be mindful. True engagement with your team takes more than just physical presence in a meeting – it requires being fully present and attentive. A leader who is fully present when interacting with their team builds stronger connections and earns respect.
Apr 8, 2022 · Learn how effective team leaders can align a group of people toward a common purpose. Team leaders set the guiding principles and goals of their work environments, using emotional intelligence and communication skills to inspire team members.
