What are leadership qualities?
Leadership qualities are personal characteristics possessed by effective leaders. Leadership is an individual’s or organisation’s capability to guide individual’s, groups or companies to fulfil a specific set of goals. It’s essential in management because it helps to achieve strategic business goals by enhancing efficiency. A leader with excellent leadership qualities can boost morale, offer guidance, initiate action and improve the working environment.
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A comprehensive list of leadership qualities
Leaders need to continually develop and exhibit leadership traits. While there are leadership traits that are inherent, it’s possible to learn and practice most of them with time, just like other skills. You should learn about the leadership traits not only in yourself but also in your employees to know who to promote to managerial roles. You should also check for leadership qualities when hiring and choose candidates who demonstrate leadership potential.
Here is a comprehensive list of leadership qualities you can look for:
Effective communication
Effective leaders are great communicators, which includes knowing when to listen and when to talk. When they talk, they clearly and concisely discuss issues to make problems known or solutions understood. They can communicate well across a wide range of mediums including email, phone, one-on-one and others.
Responsibility and accountability
Leaders take responsibility and are accountable for their actions, including any mistakes made along the way. They support and encourage individual action while ensuring that no company policies, structure and rules are broken.
Long-term thinking
Leaders have great visions. They use their visionary potential to come up with quantifiable and concrete goals to plan for and conquer the future. They do not fear change and encourage gradual and continual improvements while being open to novel ideas that can better solve problems or enhance processes.
Self-motivation
Being a leader is difficult, but they succeed by having great self-motivation to keep pushing until they accomplish the set goals. Outstanding leaders also try to improve themselves, rather than just attain success.
Confidence
Confidence is a leadership trait that virtually all great leaders share. They showcase this trait through their ability to lead with authority and make tough decisions. Their confidence allows them to foster open communication, inspire and reassure others and encourage teamwork.
People skills
Leaders tend to be team players and people-oriented. Their people skills enable them to involve others in making decisions, show concern for team members and strengthen team culture. They also motivate and energise their team members, making every individual feel important to the overall success of the team. This ensures that each team member strives their level best to achieve the set goals.
Emotional intelligence
Leaders have a high degree of emotional intelligence which enables them to greatly manage their own emotions and those of others around them. They are aware of their own emotions at all times, what such emotions mean and how the emotions affect those around them. This enables them to have better emotional control and greater control over their reactions, which enables them to achieve better outcomes when interacting with other people.
Open-mindedness
Leaders acknowledge that they may not always be right or may not always have all the answers. This is why they are ready and willing to listen to other people and implement novel suggestions for improving productivity and workflow.
Ethics
Leaders strive to remain ethical at all times which cultivates and strengthens their strong moral code. They adhere to the set rules and regulations to become role models for their subordinates.
Optimism
Positivity, even during difficult times, is a quality that leaders tend to maintain. This sets the pace for other employees to keep working towards the set goal, even when it might seem far off. This allows the team to eventually reach its target and improve the company’s bottom line.
Humility
Humility involves seeking out ways to help other people and seeking out constant feedback. It’s a quality that every leader possesses that enables them to remain in touch with their subordinates and those above them in a hierarchical organisation. They accept criticism and feedback from others to know and admit their mistakes.
Character
Leaders tend to have unique and well-defined personas that identify them to other people. They are strongly in touch with their personalities and are not afraid to take a stand, even when they have to do it alone. They know that their character is strongly defined by the things that make them different and hence they never hide or suppress them.
Passion
Leaders tend to have a passion for what they work towards and it becomes a strong motivator for their success. Their strong, uncontrollable desires to succeed make them more energetic and have great attitudes which are transferred to their subordinates.
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