What makes a good leader?
In pre-COVID, people were used to the authoritarian type of leadership, command and control. The pandemic has shifted this dramatically. There has been a dramatic move into leadership as an art form where authority needs to be distributed among team members and to encourage autonomy, connection, richer responsiveness, collaboration, transparency, and confidence within the team.
A recent client of mine was challenged to establish new ways of being and working when she was made redundant during the pandemic. Fortunately, she found a beautiful position that served as an invitation to step into a new type of leadership where she'll lead a bigger team and invite different stakeholders to the table.
She was excited about the new position but also scared since it had been a long time since she had led a big team, and this was the first time that she would be doing it all virtually. So, in one of our Q&A sessions, we touched on the qualities that make a good leader to make sure that she's heading in the right direction of leading her team.
What makes a great leader?
What are your initial thoughts when you think about leadership? We have all seen different forms of leadership in our lifetime, probably a bit more detrimental than others.
Maybe when you think about leadership, Chairman Mao comes to mind, who had certain disastrous policies. Or perhaps you think of Warren Buffet, which led you to think about investments differently. Rosa Parks can come to mind as one of the greatest civil rights activists, or maybe Oprah, who paved the way for an accessible understanding of spirituality and new age growth and development.
Before we get to the qualities of a good leader, you first need to go back to the kinds of leaders you're drawn to. It would also help to figure out why you're drawn to them and how that might be some of the qualities and values you think a good leader should possess.
Assessing leaders around the world is just one thing. I also invite you to think about leadership at a family level. Your ideas around leadership have most certainly been honed from your childhood experiences, whether from your parents, teachers or other guardians.
Six qualities of a great leader
Great leaders are aware of their blind spots and constantly work on them.
Figuring out what your blind spots are as a leader is very tricky, but doing so will positively affect how you work with your team.
Perhaps you love discipline, but the relationship-building side isn't so powerful. Maybe you're someone who avoids difficult conversations, and so this creates some tension or anxiety with your team members when they aren't sure how you want to lead this kind of situation.
Related: Do you know the impact of your 'blind spots' on others?
Great leaders consider the language they use.
What is your approach to language? Are you actively optimistic, pessimistic, or passive? Creating an optimistic environment for your team will strengthen how you all work together, especially in difficult times.
This doesn't mean you have to be overly energetic to create happiness. You just have to watch the words you use, your tone, and your body language around your team and make sure it encourages optimism.
If you need more guidance on how you can navigate using your language around your team members, my blog post, How to think about confidence as a balance of naive optimism will be of great help to you.
Great leaders ask the right questions.
Taking the time to ask your new team members the right questions means that you are coming from a place of being curious and willing to learn more about them and accommodate or consider any requests they may have.
You can start with:
What are you interested in?
How do you work best?
What would get in the way of your performance that I need to know about?
Will you let me know if there's a project where you crave a bit more autonomy?
Great leaders take the time to listen.
It's great to ask the right questions, but it would be useless if you're unwilling to listen to the responses. So it's essential to listen with an open mind and heart. It would also help to be empathetic and step into somebody else's shoes as you listen to what they're telling you.
Great leaders provide useful, constructive, and positive feedback.
Great leaders are all about giving recognition. It supports people to do more or encourages them to excel and drive themselves. Giving feedback also helps your team members not to be left in the dark, and they know what they can do better next time.
Great leaders make creativity an everyday thing.
We have never been tested in so many ways during the past couple of years that we can't afford to be complacent. So I invite you to step into your role as a manager and think of ways you can incorporate into how you lead or how you have conversations and meetings. There's so much pressure, and making things creative kind of releases the tension and creates more team bonding.
How to bring it all together
I think leadership and the working environment right now are all about encouraging commitment instead of compliance. Gone are the days when managers could just dictate how they wanted work to be delivered.
The younger generation is testing new ways of working, and they want to be involved in the process. So as you move into a leadership role, think of ways you can ignite freedom and make your team members feel useful and acknowledged. It's about showing trust and showing them that you really don't want to control their job's flow and pace. You want to involve them in the decision-making, you want them to set goals and milestones and let them know that you trust them to meet that.
What makes a good leader for you? Who are the leaders you look up to? Let's start a conversation, why not join me for a LI Live where I’ll be discussing the Art of Leaderships.