Want to be a leader? Learn these traits

1. Communication: Clearly, open and connective

As a leader, you need to be a good communicator. You sit in between your team and the stakeholders, and a lot of information traverses through you. So you need to make sure that as an information conduit, you are open and transparent. You should be able to gather, understand, and process information from one group of people in one format, and be able to pass it to a completely different group in their suited format. For example, you should be able to understand the business requirement and be able to convert them into technical/team level requirements. Conversely, you should be able to transform the team technical jargon into an easy-to-understand language for the stakeholders. Leaders set SMART(Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound) objectives, and communication is the tool to avoid confusion in doing so. Communication is one single tool that can be utilized to deal with multiple challenges. All five forms of communication are important: Verbal, Non-verbal, visual, written, and listening. Regarding listening, always remember that God gave you two ears and one mouth, so please use them in the right proportions. If you can’t communicate effectively, then you will struggle to be a good leader.

2. Relationships: Healthy and lasting

Good communication can help you to build good relationships. But there is much more than communication that is required to build relationships. Building a relationship requires you to understand people and their feelings. Empathy is the most important feeling that you need to develop, as it helps to perceive and feel the experiences of others. As a leader, you need to be the person with whom people can talk freely and openly without being judged. This does not come automatically with the title of a leader. You need to put an authentic effort to connect deeply with people. You need to learn different personalities type and work on your relationship on an individual basis. One rule does not fit all, the people and behaviors are complex, so spend a lot of time understanding them. You can use different tools to understand the personality traits such as DISC and work out your relationship plan accordingly. Your relationship quotient is good if you are able to know how someone is actually feeling not by the response but how they responded to a simple question like “How are you?”. Please ask people regularly about how they feel and don’t take them for granted. Also, don’t ask for the sake of asking, do it sincerely with an intent to understand how they really feel, and why they feel the way they feel? If you can make them feel better than before talking to you, then you are getting good at your relationships. Relationship building is a relentless and complex task that requires sincere commitment.

3. Bigger picture: Able to connect and depict

Great leaders are able to imagine a vision that others easily can’t. They are able to translate their belief into a conviction for others to be aligned. As a leader, you must clearly understand and connect to the bigger picture of your company or business. It means you understand the organization’s vision and can set your teams on the mission to achieve it. Also, you should be able to contribute to the vision and mission with your own inputs. Be bold and daring to provide your inputs to help the organization’s vision and mission. You should be convinced first before you could convince others. Learn the art of design, systems, MVP, and outcome-based thinking. Connecting to the bigger picture will help you to make the right decisions quickly and effectively. And remember, as a leader, you need to become the lens for others to see what they can’t imagine or see by themselves.

4. Empowerment and Delegation: Identify and support future leaders

Empowerment is the degree of autonomy and self-determination in people, and it is augmented through delegation. One of the biggest mistakes you can do as a leader is trying to carry everything on your shoulders. Also, you should not consider yourself as the superpower to solve each and every problem. It will neither make your team grow nor will help you grow. Leaders need to help people develop and put trust in their abilities. You should work to provide an environment that empowers your team. Once you have empowered them, start delegating responsibilities to them. This has three benefits, the first one is that you decentralize the decision-making and don’t end up as a bottleneck. The second benefit is that you give people a chance to rise to the occasion and grow as professionals. And the third one is that you free up yourself from carrying all the burden and focus on other things, and reach new levels of leadership. Ultimately, those whom you empower will learn and become future leaders. It’s a cycle, please don’t break it.

5. Feedback: Give and receive regularly

Success motivates you and failure teaches you. Both success and failures should be celebrated and used as an opportunity to give or take feedback. Feedback is a gift that you can give or ask for free. But it is a tough skill that we need to learn and hone regularly. Feedback needs to be provided in an honest and timely manner. The honest feedback can be both flattering or the opposite. Flattering feedback is easy to provide and surely makes the listener happy. But the feedback that is neither flattering nor soothing to the listener is a tough one to deliver. It needs to be delivered in a constructive way, in private and using a language that makes the listener feel being helped and not being criticized. It goes back to your communication skills. The timeliness of the feedback is equally important, don’t lose a moment while waiting for a bigger occasion. Here are few suggestions around feedback delivery such as first take permission to provide feedback just don’t throw it at people, praise in public but criticism in private, positive criticism with an intent to help, avoid negative feedback or passing judgments, use communication techniques like sandwich feedback, etc.

Conclusion

Leadership is a skill that we need to learn and enhance regularly. You need to be agile and adaptable as what works today, may not work tomorrow. A balanced approach must be exercised with growth thinking that avoids any biases. I hope this article helps you to organize your approach towards leadership training. I assume you go and explore in detail the terms that I have purposefully put in. The qualities mentioned in this article are surely a subset and not a superset. The only good approach towards learning anything is what works for you. So take what makes sense to you, send me your feedback, remember it is a gift.