Discover the 10 key leadership qualities that differentiate average leaders from highly effective ones and learn how to inspire your team toward greater success.
1. Leadership Vision and Future Planning
The first attribute of a leader is vision. You need the ability to see the future, setting a clear and inspiring direction for your team to strive for. If you haven’t found your vision and shared it with your team, you should spend time defining what you want in the future.
2. How to Enroll Your Team and Build a Shared Mission
Enrolling your team is not the same thing as telling them what to do. Enrollment means getting them to buy into your mission and a shared purpose. Average leaders tend to tell their team what to do, while highly effective leaders enroll their team in an important mission.
3. Why Caring Is Crucial for Leadership Development
In a time where technology dominates our time, you can improve your leadership by taking care of your team. This requires you to demonstrate genuine concern for their well-being and growth. Poor leaders have transactional relationships with their team members, while great leaders spend time taking care of their team.
4.Developing Empathy and Compassion in Leadership Roles
Empathy is walking a mile in another person’s shoes. Compassion is recognizing when someone’s shoes are two sizes too small and helping them get a better fit. This means you understand and value other people’s emotions and perspectives, which is necessary to build strong relationships.
5. Importance of Consistent Communication in Effective Leadership
It is important that you maintain open, transparent, and consistent dialogue to keep everyone aligned. The leader who says things once is certain to have a team that craves more communication. Great leaders have constant communication with the people on their team.
6. Setting Goals and Milestones for Team Success
Poor leaders believe their teams know what they need to do. Better leaders have a goal and a set of milestones to help their team get there. If you have a goal, you will do well to add a set of milestones that ensure everyone knows exactly how to reach it.
7. How Accountability Drives Leadership Success
Accountability is taking responsibility for results and ensuring others do the same to drive success. Without accountability, you may fail to produce the results you are responsible for generating. When each member knows what they must do, you will find your team moving ever closer to your vision. This is how leadership works.
8. Identifying and Nurturing Latent Potential in Teams
An exceptional leader can look into each person and recognize their potential. A poor leader will leave each individual at the level they started at. A highly effective leader will engage each person and identify hidden talents to help them grow, providing them opportunities for development.
9. Proactively Engaging with Team Challenges
No leader is free of problems. This is the nature of pursuing goals and results. But leaders who proactively address challenges can guide their team to an effective solution. Over time, your team will learn how to navigate obstacles and find the solution on their own.
10. Celebrating Team Results to Foster Motivation
This is an underused strategy. Instead of moving on after your team hits a milestone, a great leader will celebrate an accomplishment. Make a big deal about the results before starting the process of setting a new vision. After all, their success proves that your team is ready to take on the next important outcome. That’s worth celebrating.