How To Be A Good Leader

“Self-knowledge is the beginning of self-improvement.”

— Baltasar Gracian

Here are some important questions you should ask yourself:

How happy are you?

If you’re not happy, for whatever reasons, it will readily come across to others. And if you send out an unhappiness vibe, it will be off-putting to people and make it much harder for you to get them to follow your lead. So take a good look at whatever is making you unhappy and do your best to correct it.

Are you experiencing inner conflict?

Make sure that whatever actions you are taking on the outside match up well with your values and inner feelings. If you are experiencing inner conflict and thus don’t get a proper match between inner and outer feelings, this likely will be obvious to those people you are trying to lead and cause them to have doubts about you.

Are you satisfied with your decision-making ability?

To be a good leader, you must have good decision-making skills. It’s essential to stop and take stock of yourself from time to time and make sure the decisions you have been making are good ones. Whether you are deciding something relatively minor or something big and life-changing, how well things turn out depends on the quality of your decision-making. People don’t want to follow someone who makes poor decisions, so examine your choices and adjust accordingly.

“At that moment, in the sunset on Watership Down, there was offered to General Woundwort the opportunity to show whether he was really the leader of vision and genius which he believed himself to be, or whether he was no more than a tyrant with the courage and cunning of a pirate. For one beat of his pulse the lame rabbit’s idea shone clearly before him. He grasped it and realized what it meant. The next, he had pushed it away from him.”

― Richard Adams, Watership Down

How is your self-control?

Anyone you want to follow your lead will look carefully at how much self-control you have because they know it will affect them at some point. Your followers will all have an eagle eye out for both your good habits and your bad ones. Your behavior and, in turn, your self-control, is based on your values and goals. So make sure you know yourself well in this area and always do your best to exercise will power that translates into self-control, especially in front of others who are observing you.

How well do you resist social pressure?

A good leader knows when he or she should say “no” and when to say “yes”, even when the leader is under significant social pressure. To resist such pressure, you need to make any answer you give is always consistent with your preferences and values. If you do, the people around you will understand the basis upon which you are making, such as a decision, and will better respect your choices.

Are you good at being tolerant and understanding of others?

Unless you a well aware of your flaws and the struggles you’ve dealt with, you will have a difficult time understanding others and being tolerant as needed. Showing empathy to others is a trait all good leaders possess, and the lack of it is readily apparent to others that you want to follow you. So make a habit of showing empathy, as appropriate.

Do you display pleasure and vitality?

A leader is in the spotlight at all times. If you appear vibrant and alive, this attitude will be quite contagious to everyone around you and will make them want to follow your lead. So do your best to lead a life that’s as rich and exciting as possible. If your life is pleasurable, with lots of vitality built into it, not only will you be happier, but everyone you come into with will be as well.

Conclusion

If, when self-reflecting and endeavoring to know yourself, you find that you are coming up short in any area that was discussed above, then it’s time to focus on self-improvement. There’s very little in life that can’t be improved once someone understands what the problem is, and then takes determined action to make things better.

“When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”

— Paulo Coelho

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Thanks for reading. Copyright Terry Mansfield. All rights reserved.