Leadership

• Mother, English Teacher and Marines
• Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
• Deer in the Headlights Decision Making
• When is a Leader not a Leader

One of the more common ways to study leadership is to look at the traits leaders exhibit and try to determine which ones most contribute to their leadership ability.  The authors of The Leadership Challenge took a slightly different approach and studied the traits that people most look for  in someone they are willing to follow.  The resulting list of traits aren’t necessarily things that will make you a skilled leader, but they are things that will help you attract followers–a very important component of leadership.

The top five leadership qualities they identified are:

1. Honesty
2. Forward-looking
3. Inspiring
4. Competent
5. Intelligent

A leader who is struggling and having a hard time getting people to follow would be wise to study these traits and look for areas to improve.  While actually making an improvement to any of these areas is difficult but achievable goal, most leaders will see a significant gain simply by improving their ability to display these leadership traits.  This assumes that they already possess each trait to a degree.  Focusing on improving their display of each trait will help attract followers and will usually have a side effect of actually improving their proficiency in each trait simply by giving it more attention.

The problem that many newly minted leaders run into is that they don’t understand the difference between leading and driving. Leadership isn’t just about forcing people to do what you want.  It is about getting them to do it willingly.  If you are only able to lead in the context of having a heavy stick to wield you aren’t actually a leader.