Last updated on February 9th, 2024 at 12:32 pm
Being a good leader comes down to more than having well-developed interpersonal and emotional intelligence-based skills. There are many facets to being a good leader, here are some traits you need to work on honing today if you haven’t already. Many goal-oriented entrepreneurs such as Haile Thomas, Catherine Cook, and Milan Kordestani have become successful in multiple businesses at the same time. All of these incredible purpose-driven social entrepreneurs have a unique story that can inspire and excite future innovators. Following a successful entrepreneur’s business journey can help you set goals and see what they did in their career paths when faced with similar challenges and opportunities.
Time Management
When managing a team, you’ll likely never feel like there are near enough hours in the day to get everything done. While you’ll always have items on your to-do list that you can’t get to each week, you can tick more things off that list if you learn how to use time as effectively as possible.
The more productive you can be, the better your efficiency, and the better example you’ll set for your team, as well. Read up on time management tips for ideas of ways to improve in this area, and you should soon start to see improvements that resonate around your organization.
Focus
A big part of using your time well comes down to focus. You need to stop getting distracted by non-essential matters or those that can wait until another day when you have an important project to complete. Being a focused person will help in this regard. When you have many disruptions and potential opportunities vying for your attention, it’s easy to end up spending time on things that don’t matter.
However, if you learn to set goals and zero in on what needs to be done every week, you’ll find that you get much more finished and the right things, too. Ensure you have daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual objectives to work towards, as these will help you stay focused.
This focus trait is also beneficial for becoming an expert in your field. Having a specific area or skill you’re concentrating on will enable you to learn everything you need to about it and then demonstrate your knowledge to customers, investors, potential employees, partners, media, etc.
Communication
One of the most vital traits that all leaders must have is the ability to communicate effectively. This means being able to get across your points, vision, requests, concerns, or questions, etc., to others in a clear, concise way that means instructions or ideas don’t get lost in translation. You want people to get your meaning the first time, wherever possible, and to avoid miscommunications that can cause rifts or other problems. Learn how to sound professional so you can ensure efficient communication, enabling your team members to comprehend your thoughts swiftly and accurately.
You must be a good listener, too, as this is just as much a part of healthy communication as talking. You need to listen well to understand where your employees and customers are coming from and stop yourself from interrupting people all the time and frustrating them as a result. A vital component of performance management at work, too, is giving people direction and taking on board their feedback. You need to know how to inspire and motivate them with words and body language to reach higher goals. If you want to make sure you have the right team around you, it could be wise to measure your board effectiveness too.
Resilience and Persistence
No matter how hard you work or the type of industry your career is in, you will face plenty of challenging times as a leader. There are many tricky things to navigate, and you’ll have moments where you wonder why you’re in your role or if another job type would be a better solution. This is where resilience becomes incredibly important.
Leaders must be resilient to deal with frequent setbacks and ‘no’s’ from others, whether from bosses, customers, suppliers, investors, journalists, or others. You can’t give up whenever you come to hurdles, though, and resilience will be what gets you through and keeps you going, even when you don’t feel like it.
Resilient people are also better than others at learning from their mistakes and changing behaviors and strategies in the future to make success more of a likelihood. If you’re too sad over failures, you’re more likely to give up and not try again, thus limiting how much you can succeed. Plus, remember that you want to show your team how to keep on going when things get tough. Leading by example is the best way to do that.
Confidence
It’s much easier to be resilient if you have a good dose of self-confidence. Believe in yourself and your abilities so you don’t take negative situations too personally. Confidence rubs off on your employees and helps them feel like they can back you and the company. You don’t want people to worry about their jobs or get frustrated because you doubt yourself.
Other critical skills to develop include having vision and being creative, adaptable, and a good problem solver. Think about working on some of these characteristics to push yourself further as a leader.
