Want to Become a Good Leader? Master These Qualities
The qualities every good leader needs
If you search for the definition of leader, you’ll find out that it explicitly says that it is a person that leads and guides a group of people. Historically there has always been a leader in groups, animals have apex predators when they hunt in packs, countries have presidents or royalty, and businesses have CEOs and board members. This only showcases our evolutionary need for a leader, someone we trust to guide us into success.
To earn this trust leaders need to prove themselves to others, whether it is through their intelligence, adaptability, or exceeded expectations. Whatever the reason, we need to feel safe in order to follow someone. For this, the traits of a good leader are key.
Some people developed those traits while growing up, but others develop those skills by acting and gaining experience through their work. If you are here it means you want to reach your full potential and become better. Now we want to share with you the qualities of a good leader and tips to improve those skills.
What makes a great leader
Not everyone is born with the innate skills to become a leader, sure you can have some of them inherited by your parents like charisma or critical thinking, but you also need valuable experience to be considered someone worth looking up to. Critical skills like thinking outside the box, communication, and emotional intelligence emerge through experience, feedback, and meaningful challenges. Leaders are born when they have the chance to prove themselves in challenging situations.
Before it was normal to think people were born leaders and it was completely ignored that some skills could be developed. 20% of people show potential leadership that can be unlocked through training. Unfortunately, nearly 58 percent of managers report never receiving formal leadership training, which explains why so many organizations continue to face leadership shortages.
Which turns into great missed opportunities, because everyone deserves a chance to become a leader. Sometimes you can have scenarios like the movies where “the chosen one” arises and it feels like you are fulfilling a prophecy. But most of the time you will need to prove yourself by thinking outside the box, a skill earned through experience and training.
So all of this is a process if you think about it, instead of a self imposed title. Being a great leader also means you are constantly seeking help and always trying to learn new things, as you can’t rely on authority by itself.
People want leaders who show purpose, build confidence, and help them understand how they can contribute to meaningful progress.
In business environments, the decisions leaders make directly impact their team and in some cases the company as a whole, so making the right call earns trust. Employees who trust their leaders are up to 14 times more engaged, while 82% of employees believe poor leadership directly contributes to disengagement and thoughts of quitting.
On the other side, strong leadership improves engagement, reduces turnover, raises productivity, and stabilizes teams during periods of pressure. Playing an important role in the team’s wellbeing, as around 69% of employees say they would work harder if they felt more recognized.
So, in conclusion, a great leader is shaped through life experiences and shows their trust is worth by overcoming difficult times. People start trusting them and following them, but the leader must also transform them into leaders. As this quote states:
“The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.”
– Ralph Nader
The 12 qualities of a good leader
Every leader can have their own unique set of qualities but they all share many of them, which is why we created a list of 12 that we believe are the most important qualities of a good leader. While some of people may add more, we wanted to summarize them as much as possible so you know the best leadership qualities and focus on the following ones:
1. Self-Awareness
Self-awareness is usually listed as one of the most important traits of a good leader, and you may ask yourself why. Through self-awareness, leaders are able to recognize their strengths and weaknesses, which makes them aware of their limits, especially related to their skills. Allowing them to stay humble by knowing when to ask for help and they also learn from their mistakes, owning all their actions.
2. Vision
Vision in its core means the ability to see and for businesses it is the ultimate goal they aspire to reach. So adapting this to leadership means that a great leader is one that is able to see the endgame of their work. It can be a business strategy, the message they share through a blog, or the final product that will be delivered to customers.
Vision provides passion by allowing people to chase their goals and it is through that vision that they inspire their team members to adopt a growth mindset. They also stay creative by constantly thinking outside the box to find solutions. Again, routing back to business, leaders are important because they guide everyone through their vision and share it in a way everyone can see it too.
3. Communication
Communication is a skill every leader needs to master, as you need to make sure your ideas are clearly communicated and understood. This type of communication has the following goals: Show gratitude to their team members, handling conflict, recognizing good work, and providing constructive feedback.
Communication is related with our previous entry, vision, as leaders need to communicate their vision clearly. Through communication you avoid misunderstandings and ensure everyone is working towards the same goals.
4. Learning Agility
Learning is something that we all should always do. We may be great at our jobs, but there are still many things to learn. New trends, statistics, methodologies, or needs appear every once in a while and a great leader stays ahead of the game by learning.
When things get difficult, knowledge is our only ally so seeking for it constantly prepares us to face challenges and succeed. Staying humble allows leaders to recognize when their experience and knowledge is not enough, so they start looking for the answers on other people they trust, team members, courses, books, articles, etc.
5. Collaboration
As we have clearly stated before, a leader is someone who guides other people, which means that by definition alone, collaboration is implied. If collaboration is non-existent, then there is no leadership dynamic, just people doing what they are told to. Integrating and working with team members and new people is one of the essential characteristics of a good leader.
Fostering a culture of collaboration easily allows leaders to delegate tasks whenever they or a team member is not able to perform it. People will start seeing individuals as one team, so they will pay attention to their partner when they need help, instead of leaving them on their own. This plays a big role in transforming followers into future leaders as well.
6. Influence
There is nothing more influential in someone’s life than having a great leader whom they trust to guide them. Mutual trust is a great way to build relationships where everyone involved influences one another positively. When people are influenced by you, or vice versa, you encourage them to become their best selves.
But the best way to influence others is by leading by example. If your actions don’t reflect what you preach, then you can not expect others to believe in you.
7. Resilience
Someone who’s resilient recovers from adversity and is inspired when encountering a challenge, as they will adapt to the situation instead of stressing out. You can’t expect your team members to stay calm through tough times if you are not able to do so yourself.
76% of professionals report that work stress impacts their personal relationships. In a world where mental health issues are more important than ever, having someone to look up to when things are not going as expected is great. So when leaders show confidence and deal with pressure, they transmit that same level of steadiness to their team members.
8. Empathy
Empathy builds psychological safety. It goes beyond understanding emotions to acting based on what people need. Empathetic leaders reduce conflict, strengthen trust, and create a sense of belonging. Teams that feel heard and valued show higher engagement, stronger performance, and better retention. Empathy is closely linked to many of the best leadership skills, such as communication, conflict resolution, and motivation.
Empathy is needed more than ever today, this is not only a leadership skill, but a human aspect every person should have. But, when someone lacks empathy, they are not able to relate to the people around them, making them unstable and unsuitable to become a leader. Caring about someone else’s well being is a great skill that leaders need to develop in order to have a successful team.
Empathy is a skill that allows you to put yourself in someone else’s place, fostering a great relationship with others. Leaders show empathy by knowing how to treat someone that is dealing with new challenges or with familiar difficulties. Experience makes them understand what someone is going through.
9. Decision-Making
Leaders avoid impulsive decisions as they know they come from unproven methods. But this doesn’t mean they can’t adapt or improvise if the situation requires it. The difference is they will take their time to assess what needs to be done, and if they don’t have the needed resources, they will go through their most valuable asset, their experience, to find a solution.
When they have enough resources, they rely on data to make their decisions, which allows them to better understand the situation they are dealing with. Critical thinking is key for this and can be achieved through experience and hard work.
10. Transparency
The definition of transparency says that it is a quality that allows light to go through something. If we apply this to leadership, then we could use it as a metaphor where great leaders are those who allow the truth to go through them.
Transparency reduces uncertainty and increases engagement. Team members led by transparency will always have enough context and are allowed to ask questions until they understand directions. This enhances accountability as expectations are clear.
11. Accountability
Accountability stands among the best qualities of a leader because it strengthens culture and performance. Leaders who take responsibility for results and admit mistakes set the tone for team ownership. Remember we mentioned about leading by example? Well accountability is one of the best ways to show this. This takes away the team’s fear of recognizing mistakes, as they will have a leader that shows them failure is the biggest teacher. Instead of scolding someone when they make a mistake, encourage them to analyze what went wrong and learn from it.
12. Emotional intelligence
Being an emotionally intelligent person means that you are able to account for your emotions and not let them take control over you. Instead you are able to analyze and understand them to avoid them from interfering with your work. This doesn’t mean reclusion, instead it means you take your time to understand why you are feeling a certain way and move on.
Leaders with strong emotional intelligence show empathy, are able to stay resilient, handle conflict very well, and use their emotions to inspire their team members.
Tips to develop and improve your leadership skills
As we mentioned earlier, leadership skills can be developed through experience and hard work,you don’t necessarily have to be a leader from a young age. Below are some of the best ways in which you can put those skills to practice:
Ask other leaders for help
If you have someone you admire, it means they have something you want to have or they have achieved similar goals. You can go ahead and trust them with a difficult situation because they have faced adversity and come out successful. Since they already are exactly where you want to be, it means they have already gone through the tedious process of trial and error, saving yourself some time by learning from them.
Enroll in mentoring programs
Companies that invest in leadership training often see about a 25% improvement in performance and productivity. Mentoring programs are created so people can access a single platform where they can talk to experienced leaders who can help them find a solution to a problem they are facing.
Having a mentor comes with several benefits, and one of them is that it allows you to have someone by your side who will guide you through an issue and help you develop the right state of mind to solve the problem.
Take online courses
We mentioned learning agility as one of the traits of a good leader, and looking to learn new things sets them apart. When they find themselves lacking a skill, they look for a way to develop it. Online courses are one of the most efficient ways to do it, because you can learn at your own pace and take lessons from anywhere around the world.
Taking free or paid online courses ensures you are better prepared to face any challenge you may encounter.
Read leadership books
Reading exposes aspiring leaders to new strategies and prevents common mistakes. Reflection enhances this process. Leaders who combine reading with honest evaluation of their own behavior gain deeper self awareness and stronger clarity about what needs to change.
Act based on your experience
Experience equips leaders with enough knowledge to navigate through personal and professional challenges, but experience is not enough sometimes. You need to take your time to reflect on said experiences, remember what you did right and the times you failed to know exactly how to act.
This is a skill that has evolved with humans. Acting on instinct based on previous experiences is something that we have learned over time.
Gather feedback from others
Feedback provides better ideas on how to improve, without it you will only be assuming things. Leaders don’t assume, they take action to investigate and to find areas of improvement. People tend to become biased by their own work or actions, so having someone else evaluating yourself is key to refining your skills.
Conclusion
Everyone can become a leader if they desire to, it just depends on the level of commitment you are willing to put. Becoming one requires hardwork, willingness to fail, try different approaches, and a wish to become better. So stop thinking you can’t become a leader or that you need to be a follower for the rest of your life.
Go out there, try new things, ask for help, and surround yourself with people who are better leaders than you and are willing to support you in your journey. Just remember to stay focused and not forget about the 12 traits of a good leader we shared.
At Mentors CX we believe that everyone deserves a chance to become a leader, which is why we created our platform filled with professionals from different backgrounds. Search for our mentors and reach out to them so you can find the right fight for you. What are you waiting for? Become the leader you are destined to be!