12 Excellent Qualities That Make A Great Leader

Business needs a leader. Not just ordinary one, but a great one. There’s always a great leader behind every business’s success. A leader that determines how his subordinates take actions and perform.

When you’re in a leadership position, it is imperative that the team you work with respect you. In fact, not just your team, but also your superior and other colleagues with similar positions.

What could be the qualities that make you a great leader? How is your attitude, emotion and mind? Let’s explore them here.

1. Good Personality
You need to have good intention and good attitude. You know how to act in front of your superior and teams. Also, don’t forget to always maintain a smiling face. Leaders with good personality are charismatic and simpathetic to their team. They provide good feedback and always supportive. This positive value are already a good start in leading people.

2. Intelligent and Smart
You have knowledge on the business, has plentiful of ideas and can think further when issue occurs. Being smart is ridiculously important in leadership. Smart leaders have smart ideas and able to make smart decision. This is a very essential point in how business turn out in future.

3. Confidence
There’s no leader without confidence. You need to build your self confidence, speak and act in confidence. The basics of building confidence are by having clear vision, knowledge and ability to coach. You have to believe in making the impossible possible.

4. Integrity
Integrity is the values that embody leaders. By having integrity, you are able to decide what’s best for business. A person with integrity has tendency to think, speak and do what’s right.

5. Inspire People
An inspirational leader is always passionate. You have to understand the vision and mission of the organization and able to share that passion to others, mainly your team which you deal with everyday. You listen to people, talk to them and inspire them to submit their ideas and thoughts as well and yet connect all the dots leading to bigger pictures to achieve goals.

6. Face Challenges
A great leader is brave enough to face and deal with any challenging issues within the organization, whether it is an internal situations such as team problems and business downturn or external situations such as clients or customers issues and economy issues. This doesn’t always mean you have to face them yourself but you need to inspire your team to face the challenge together. You won’t be able to do this if you are avoiding the situations.

7. Build Trust
Your team will be more loyal and enthusiastic when the trust you. In order to do this, you have to be open and honest while inspiring them to be open too. They can perform best when working in an environment run by people they trust. Ask them about their children’s education or family vacation, but don’t pry. Let them know that you are concern about their success as well.

8. Authentic
By being authentic, you can build your own legitimacy. You can do this through empathy and honesty. Though reading and learning from other popular leaders are advised, but you need to be yourself with your own style of leadership. Take the good sides of the popular leaders, but don’t try to imitate them. Authentic leaders are always positive and truthful. They promote openness and nurture relationship with others.

9. Empowerment
Everybody has their own talent. An accountant won’t know how to sell and a marketing person doesn’t understand finance. Many leaders don’t understand this concept and keep pushing everyone to do everything. Try to learn from the coach of an athlete team. A successful coach never force everyone in his team to learn everything. He knows who are good in each position and form a combination of skills to achieve the goals. It is the best way to truly find each people’s capabilities and get the most out of them.

10. Positivity
An ups and downs in business will happen many times, but if you, as a leader don’t maintain positive mind and have emotionally troubled of the downturn, how can you manage your team to be optimist anymore? Being positive is actually not just applicable to leaders, but any person. By being positive, you can clear your mind from any bad assumption, negative suspicion and avoid gossips. To be a great leader, you must create a culture of positivity to develop an environment of optimism.

11. Communication
Imagine when you have a great idea but you don’t communicate with your team. Or imagine if your team has a good idea but don’t know how to speak up. Building communication between you as a leader and your team is essential. It is your job to be aware and solve this challenge. Everyone including you has to be in constant communication and treat work as a collaboration. Get everyone to communicate their ideas and thoughts since that’s one of the key to push the business forward.

12. Making Decision
Have you seen a leader that is confusing in making decision? I have. In fact, I have seen many of them. Making decision is super important for being a great leader. Your team may be talented, smart and intelligent but to push the idea on board, it all depends on your decision. Your knowledge will determine if it’s a good idea or not. Your braveness in taking the step is crucial too. You might make wrong decision, but who said business is not risky? Who can guarantee an opportunity is going to success or not? So, let your knowledge involved, let your confidence slip in, let your intuition take part and be ready to challenge the worst situation.

A great leader is not created in one day. It requires many years of trial and experiences. Don’t be afraid to lose, but always keep your spirit to stand up again. You may not be a great leader today, but you can always be one in future.

If you find this articles and tips useful, feel free to share them. If you have any other leadership quality to share, do let me know in the comment box below.