Why are leadership Qualities and skills necessary? We think of leaders as someone at the helm of the ship. We imagine someone who is managing a lot of people and juggling a lot of things.
However, sometimes leaders are more like the foundation of a great building. In order for a building to be strong, it needs to have a good foundation, if not, it does not matter that you use good construction materials, it will crumble.
Yes, team leads and managers need to have good leadership skills to create a thriving environment. Still, even if you’re not in a leadership position (right now), leadership skills are vital for you to hone.
Here is the list of Leadership qualities you need to transform yourself into an effective and good leader.
What Leadership qualities make a difference when you are trying to grow as a leader.
Leaders are may have a wide range of abilities or skills because not 2 leaders are created equal. Depending on your background, culture, and even DNA, your personality and abilities will vary.
However, through time several skills or qualities have been shown to be crucial to being a leader. Here is a list of the most essential leadership qualities.
Effective Communication
There are many facets of communication that make or break your leadership abilities. As a leader, you’ll have constant conversations both one-on-one and in group settings, and it’s essential to know how to have solid communication skills
Communication is about being transparent with instructions, explaining things clearly, and reducing confusion that your team may have. It’s about facilitating conversation and the flow of ideas within your group and interpersonal interactions. And sometimes, it’s about having tough conversations respectfully and productively.
But communicating isn’t all about talking. Active listening is a crucial component of solid communication, and it’s easy to get wrong. If possible, when listening maintain eye contact because this denotes you care and are listening carefully.
listening is a fundamental skill as a good leader. It’s about going into a conversation with total focus on the person speaking and what they’re saying. It’s about leaving preconceived notions at the door and not interrupting.
In discussions, it’s easy to fall into the trap of not listening but “waiting to talk.” When your team knows you hear them, they’re more likely to be transparent.
Feedback Abilities
Leaders sometimes don’t realize how feedback-driven people are. People can’t fix problems that they don’t know are happening.
Providing feedback can be intimidating even for the most seasoned leader. It’s an art and a balancing act of addressing the problem at hand while also being delicate enough so that they don’t perceive your feedback as an attack.
Feedback is one key of the key qualities of leadership. One way to offer productive feedback is to focus on the behavior, not on the person. Don’t single out a personality trait or intelligence; make it clear it’s about what they’re doing, not who they are.
Words are important. Make your feedback, even if it’s a critique, solution-driven. Brainstorm together on how to problem-solve something so that performance can improve.
It’s your job as a leader to empower the people who work under you, even when working through mistakes.
But don’t only focus on negative feedback. Let your team know when something is going well, how helpful it is, and how much you value the efforts. Letting your team know that you notice them when they’re doing well is something they want to hear.
Delegating Capabilities
No one can do it all themselves, even the most productive leader. Leaders who try to take on too much will quickly burn out and won’t be present to manage a team effectively.
Delegating is not a sign of weakness. It’s actually one of the most important leadership qualities. A strong leader knows that handing over tasks to those who work under them can be a teaching moment.
A leader needs to focus on the critical things that no one else can and should pass on the rest of the tasks.
It’s an excellent opportunity to learn your employees’ strengths and weaknesses and evaluate their performance. But good communication is essential here. Having measurable outcomes, clear expectations, and providing the resources your team needs are necessary for everyone to succeed.
It also provides both you and your employees mentorship opportunities. You are a resource to them. Maybe they want to be in your position someday, and this is an excellent chance to show them the skills they’ll need to get there.
Trust and Respect
Being a leader is an ongoing process. A good leader needs to constantly invest in their team to continue to earn their trust and respect.
Having integrity in leadership means taking steps to make the choices that will be best for everyone, not just yourself. Being reliable and trusted to make the right choices for your team makes people want to work for and with you.
People value confidentiality in the workplace. Discerning what everyone needs and doesn’t need to know means that no one feels betrayed.
At the same time, influential leaders need to learn where confidentiality and transparency are required. Honesty is the best policy so that your team doesn’t feel deceived.
Beyond your team having trust in you, you also need to show them that you have confidence in them.
Try to give your staff the autonomy to make choices for themselves and avoid micro-management. Your employees need to see that you trust them to take the lead sometimes.
Motivation
Chances are, your employees are motivated to be in the workplace for more than just a paycheck.
Employees may be passionate about the industry, align with the company’s values, or prefer the nature of the job. Whatever it is, as a leader, it’s critical to identify your employees’ motivations and nurture them.
Show your staff that you value their input and encourage their investment in the team. Take the time to do team-building days.
Go to an escape room to work on teamwork skills, do something active, or have lunch and get to know each other differently.
Get to know your staff’s interests.
It might be work-life balance or relentless career advancement, making sure that people are getting their needs met to the best of their ability.
Accountability
All individuals are meant to be accountable for their actions and commitment. However, for leaders, it’s a crucial leadership quality since they are expected to be role models.
In order to be an accountable individual, you need to have clear goals. With clear goals and aiming towards them, you are able to identify when you make mistakes, fail to achieve simply lose your vision.
Being accountable is normally not easy because it implies calling out yourself and being transparent to an extent that might be harsh for your image.
However, by practicing accountability often you develop your empathy muscle and your team members have a better perception of your honesty and integrity.
Empowerment
As we look ahead into the next century,leaders will be those who empower others.
Bill Gates
Another leadership quality is Empowerment.
this type of power refers to when a leader allows and encourages team members to participate in decision-making, problem-solving, and many other important processes.
Moreover, empowerment relates directly with other leadership qualities such as communication and empathy
It’s been researched that empowered employees correlate to better job performance and quality of the work.
It is clearly impossible to run a successful business or corporation with a one-man show. For this reason, empowerment, as well as delegation capabilities, are proven to be assets for leaders in the 21st century.
Leaders that do not empower team members can become isolated and as a result, lose vision and impact on the project or organization that he is collaborating whit.
Empathy
Let’s face it: the people you see and spend time with at work are some of the people you see the most.
Your employees devote energy in a 40-hour workweek, so, naturally, there will be an expectation from your staff for you to be invested in their lives.
If you have empathy on your bag as one of your Leadership Qualities, you will have a better connection towards your teams.
It would help if you showed them that you care about them and be open to helping them when they need it.
Now more than ever, the workplace demographic is shifting all the time. People are staying in the workforce past the traditional retirement age,
they’re changing jobs more frequently, and people who are very different can end up working closely together.
Acknowledging and understanding the differences in your employees can make their work environment more enjoyable and help you motivate, communicate, and identify their skillset more effectively.
Flexibility in necessary on the qualities of leadershipp
great leaders need to learn to be just as flexible as their employees. Unexpected things happen, and your team members will look to you for a reaction. When you keep a cool head and can switch directions quickly, they’ll appreciate it.
When last-minute changes threaten the outcomes of a project, the ability to improvise will be essential.
It would be best if you hoped for the best but planned for the worst. If you can get ahead of problems quickly by adapting to anything that gets thrown at you, employees will learn how to take these things in stride and will be able to model their behavior after you.
With the decline of the traditional 9-to-5 workday, the workplace is learning how to accommodate changing technology, changing work environments, and remote working, and flexibility plays a large part in that.
Commitment to a Clear Vision one main of the main qualities of leadership
A tangible end goal or focus creates a clear blueprint for your team to follow and helps achieve goals faster. Knowing exactly where the group or company is heading, great leaders can communicate their priorities to their staff and encourage follow-through.
When leaders can convey what the expectations are, work ethic can spike among everyone. Leading by example, in this case, is necessary. When your team members are part of your process of determining a goal, they follow the model. The perseverance will spread throughout the team.
Organization and Planning
Beyond just personal organization, you need to juggle many tasks, thoughts, and ideas all at once. Without organization, planning, and execution at a leadership level, plans fall through the cracks and never materialize.
To deliver strong results, great leaders need to facilitate larger-scale strategizing to support the work of everyone on their team.
Without careful planning and organization in executing projects and ideas, the team members will waste time figuring out their tasks instead of doing them.
Influential leaders didn’t start that way; they have to continue to work on the skills that make them great. They have to adapt to the changing needs of staff and team members, and the skills they apply are changing with every new situation that comes up.
Anyone can learn to become a good leader. By being aware of these skills to improve your leadership qualities and practicing them in the workplace, you will climb the career ladder in no time.
Positive Attitude
Virtually nothing is impossible in this world if you just put your mind to it and maintain a positive attitude.
Lou Holtz
True leaders need a lot of self-awareness because they inspire team members through attitude and perception more than by actions.
Being positive goes a long way. Thins at some point will go south, it does not matter how great your environment and culture are.
Maintaining a positive view will show team members that even in uncertainty as a good leader you have the self-confidence of knowing everything is going to be okay.
Constant Selfdevelopment and growth
Technology has brought with it constant innovation. For this reason, truly great leaders need to often study and approach new ideas of growth.
Another of the qualities of leadership is that leaders that are constantly evolving through study and practice are more adaptive, dynamic, and open to feedback.
Being in constant development makes a leader become self-aware of its strengths and weaknesses. By doing so they become more resilient and more of a role model to all the teammates under their supervision
Also, being in constant growth helps you develop critical thinking and allows you to refine your leadership style according to new knowledge. personal development and also professional are crucial skills of a good leader and any professional.
Leadership Qualities FAQs
who makes better leaders males or females?
Statistics show that males account for about 84% of all the CEO (Aka Leaders in the USA) However, women seem to be gaining ground.
In a survey among board directors, 84% agree that diversity enhances board performance. However, while 91% of the companies surveyed have initiated measures to increase diversity, 52% still think these efforts are merely a response to political correctness, while 48% said their shareholders might be too preoccupied with the idea.
Aphollo Technical
However, other studies are showing that even though they are still minority women tend to be better leaders as per the perception of their team members.
According to the study, women are perceived to be more honest, intelligent, hardworking, decisive, compassionate, outgoing, and creative
Go, Girls!!!!
Are you born a great leader or you can Learn Good Leadership Qualities?
You can definitely develop all the qualities of a successful leader. However, you will need training, discipline, and a lot of hard work.
There are many courses for free here you can learn the basics. Also, practical practice is needed.
For example to develop the Leadership attribute of Communication you will need to spend hours with teammates, friends, and family members to polish this skill. There is no way around it! You learn to communicate by communicating.
Why leadership is important?
The easiest way to understand the importance of leadership is by imagining a ship without its captain.
In a Ship, even though all the crew members have the capabilities, tools, and knowledge to run the ship correctly, without its captain it most likely will go nowhere or will take them a long time to get there.
Leaders are the people in charge of coordinating everyone’s effort towards a common vision or goal.
By knowing each individual and their limitations the teams can be benefited from everyone’s talents in a more effective way
What Makes a Good leader? or What are good leadership qualities?
Good leaders have all the qualities we have described above. However, a personal trait that they should have is resilience emotional intelligence.
Things are going to get tough and if you don’t have control of your thoughts and patience to look for the right solutions. If you as a servant leader get frustrated you won’t be a good leader.
Also, by inspiring everyone on the team and motivating them leaders ensure that performance is kept at its peak and help remove any obstacles that might be encountered.
What Is leadership?
Leadership is the skill of a person to influence and guide others between an organization or community
Being a great leader is not an easy task, it requires many qualities and a lot of humility.
Leaders are individuals that make hard decisions, that help achieve a vision or mission
A leader is someone that is able to establish clear and reachable goals.
What is a Servant leadership?
As a Certified Scrum Master, as leaders, we often are called servant leaders. The reason to be called a servant is that we are leaders that look to help others and take obstacles out of the way.
The priority of a leader should be always to help his team members or reports to succeed. It is often stigmatized that leaders are the ones that keep tabs on employees and have the ability to get them in trouble.
However, a servant leader puts the needs of others and their team first.
What is Autocratic leadership?
Autocratic leadership is a bad way of being a leader. These kinds of leaders are normally micromanaging team members and make all the decisions for them
By not giving freedom to them he is becoming more a boss vs a leader that would delegate instead.
This kind of bad leader will give little to no information or feedback to its employees looking to keep the higher hand when things go wrong. Also, an autocratic leader is known for exploiting or abusing their employees in order to ger personal or professional benefits and praise
What are bad leadership qualities?
We have explained several good leadership qualities. However, Leaders are expected to behave in a certain way and have certain traits and qualities. For this reason, there are bad leadership qualities that leaders should avoid, some of those are
Miscomunication
we explained before how important is to have real and good communication, not having it is a really bad trait on a leader
Missing to Motivate
Unmotivated individuals won’t perform nor will participate in the vision of the leader
Inconsistency
You cant be a good leader today and not tomorrow, there should be consistency across your actions and attitudes
Micromanaging
Leaders should empower, by micromanaging a leader is telling its reports that it does not trust them or their work.
Setting a bad example
If you do not set an example with your own actions it does not matter that you have other leadership qualities. Miscoumunitactin or failing to show accountability will harm the trust the teammates have in you.
Rushed recruitment
An important task of a leader is to select its team members, because of this selections depend on the success of the team. Not taking time to review and get to know the candidates is a really poor leadership quality.
Conflict Avoidance
bad leaders do not like to confront people or have any conflict. However, from conflict is that normally comes the best growth opportunities. A good leader should learn to medaite in order to avoid violence however shall never avoid uncomfortable conversations.
Statistics
Leadership Skills and Qualities Conclusion
being a leader is a complex subject, we could actually write a whole book about it and still have ground to cover.
What is important is to understand the basic skills that you need to start being a good leader and grow personally and professionally.
If you are interested in learning more about performances tips, human development and personal growth hacks don’t hesitate to look into other of my posts
If you don’t have enough time to read all the leadership qualities here is a video even more summarized of the best traits of a great leader.
Regards,