Being a leader is not as easy task nowadays. There are a lot of aspects that a leader needs to focus upon in order to drive success. Often, individuals tend to ask what are successful leadership qualities? Or how to become a leader everyone wants to follow? Leading a team these days is like cracking a hard nut. For some, leadership is the route to achieving power, a way to intimidate individuals and control things. While for others, leadership is about bringing positive transformation and making big things happen, which will benefit the team as well as the company.
There are some leaders who are immensely loved by the people. In fact, they are the leaders everyone wants to follow, for instance, Barack Obama, Narendra Modi, Warren Buffet, and Jeff Bezos. On the other hand, there are a few leaders who forcefully try to exercise power and are easily despised by the people.
So what are the leadership qualities that make a leader worth following? Below mentioned are the 5 successful leadership qualities, which every follower looks forward to discovering in their leader.
5 Successful Leadership Qualities:
Service Mentality
As a leader, you hire individuals to make your task easier. Perhaps, you imagine that hired individuals will free you from the smaller tasks allowing you to pursue bigger projects. Of course, they’re hired to serve you, but it works in both ways. In order to lead a talented group of individuals, you must concentrate on serving them effectively. Being a leader, your task is to level hindrance and to clear a path, which is free of distractions. You need to streamline the processes, discover the resources, and get rid of political nonsense. The bottom line is, you need to figure out what is holding your team back and fix the issues so they can proceed further. Instead of being self-centered, putting your team’s needs in the center is a good gesture.
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Courageous Leadership
You know what is the worst phrase associated with a leader? It’s ‘Gutless.’ Teams expect their leaders to follow a courageous path and be bold enough to point the correct and incorrect practices. There are leaders who are good in politics (cunning), but no one wants to respect such leader. Executing a plan isn’t a courageous leadership. Along with stamina, focus, and vision, a leader must have real ‘guts’, as we call it, to confront matters without bothering how unpopular it makes them. Genuine leaders do not adopt shady practices or indulge in conflicts of interests. Instead, they take a stand for what’s better for society, employees, and customers, even if it means placing their job on the line.
Personal Attention
The best leaders are those who pay personal attention to their team. For instance, they are the ones who present their new hired member with a laptop and ask them to “Go forward, Think, Innovate, and Give their best shot”. Personal attention is one of the most important top 5 successful leadership qualities. Great leaders make the success of their team members as a personal mission of their own. They pay attention, care about their members, and try to maintain a personal connection. Instead of neglecting the efforts of the team members, they take the considerate amount of time to train and coach them. Instead of sugarcoating, they offer regular performance feedbacks.
Space
Top leaders are those who give their members ownership. Steve Jobs and Larry Page are the best examples of such leaders. Great leaders are well-aware of the fact that talent doesn’t bloom in an enclosed space. Instead of standing over the individuals, they move out of the way offering individuals to explore various possibilities. These are the leaders who use trust as a medium to operate. This way they receive loyalty in return.
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Bring Out The Best
Best leaders always keep one question in focus: “How am I supposed to bring out the best in my people?” They initiate this gesture by not pigeonholing the individuals. They do not focus on what a member cannot do or how others feel about him/her. Instead, they focus on the strengths. Many times, the leaders are the ones who bring out the best capabilities in an individual that he/she didn’t even realize they had.
