People often ask me what skills do I think make a good leader, or what should they do to be a good leader.
My answer is always the same, ‘think about the best leader you ever had, what was it you liked about them, what qualities did they have that you admire’.
My point here is, why not try to be a leader that you yourself would like to work for, that you would admire and that had the qualities that you see in other good leaders.
If you can do that then maybe you too will be respected and admired as a leader.
So what qualities do I look for in my boss/leader.
- Openness – I want to be able to come to them and tell them anything.
- Honesty – I want to be able to trust and believe what they say
- Supportive – I want them to provide me with help when I need it
- Encouraging – I want them to push me to achieve new limits
- Constructive – I want them provide feedback which helps rather than hurts me
- Enthusiastic – I want them to love what they do and to share that passion with me
- Energising – I want them to be full of drive and energy
- Respectful – I want them to respect me and be respectful of others
- Communicative – I want them to keep me informed with whats going on and why
- Approachable – I want to feel comfortable when coming to see them
I could go on, but I think you get my point 🙂
If this is what I would look for in a boss/leader, then why not try to have and exhibit these qualities myself.
I remember I had a one-to-one meeting with one of my staff and at the end of the meeting he told me that he really enjoyed our regular one hour meetings, it gave him the opportunity to share ideas, get feedback and better understand what was going on.
I said great, I am so glad to hear it and I asked him do you have one-to-one meetings with you team members?
He said ‘no, i don’t find them useful’
So I asked him ‘what about our meetings do you think they are more useful to me or to you?
He thought for a moment and then said ‘you’re right, this meeting is for me, I will go and immediately organise one-to-one meetings with my team members for them’
Being the Leader or Boss that you would want to have is a very simple approach to being a better leader.
So ask yourself what do you like about your leader and are you doing the same things?
Gordon Tredgold
Leadership is above all an art . So a good leader must be skilled in the art of leadership. This skill seems to be a compound of a number of ingredients; of which the principal ingredients are the following :
– the ability to inspire,
– the ability to motivate ( to act in a way that helps create a climate for arousing motivations)
– the ability to understand people and their motives which vary with time and situation.
Which of the above abilities is a gift and which is an acquired talent remains a debatable point.
Thank you for this. I love your explanation as it is short and to the point and offers us the chance to reflect before learning more about ourselves.
I would like to use your words as an introduction to my sessions on Appraisals, Constructive Conversations and Effective Team Working. Is that ok?
The question is to what extent can you be the Leader or Boss that you would want to have? and how can you be ?
I am glad that some of the qualities stated above such as Honesty reflect the moral aspects of leadership which are often ignored by the scholars of political science who like to talk about ” Ends that justify means “
I do not believe that we can overstate the importance of honesty.
Without honesty we have limited trust and trust is the basis of leadership.
One of the biggest issue we have with politicians is we do not trust them,
they say one thing and do another – for those that we trust we are much more loyal too
Mistrust of politicians is common .Indeed; how can we trust people who say one thing and do another ? I remember that my London neighbours often echoed their mistrust of politicians . If that is the case in a democracy , perhaps the oldest modern democracy in the world ,what would we expect people to think about politicians in countries where politicians are not truly elected but imposed by force . The result , as we have seen in many countries, is hatred and uprising …
Isaac Watts once said : ” Learning to trust is one of life’s most difficult tasks “