You are reading this because you may sense some characteristics of leadership in you. Or maybe you got the intent to become a leader. The intention is enough to get started.
Haven’t you experienced guidance and advice from particular individuals and felt more enthusiastic and confident then? Leaders can influence and impact other’s life significantly with their traits and perceptions.
Some of the characteristics of leadership may have already been inherited in you. At the same time, others can be learned and perceived through continuous practice and repetition. Just get started and change your own life as well as others. It’s absolutely nothing to worry about if you haven’t led before.
Here are the twelve must-have characteristics of leadership which will make you a great leader
- A positive attitude
- Honest and reliable
- Empathy
- Calmness and confidence
- Self-awareness
- A great communicator
- Responsibility
- Ability to delegate
- Creativity
- Vision
- A great influencer
- knowledge
A positive attitude
A positive attitude brings optimism and helps to avoid all negative thinking and worries. People with a positive mindset can remain hopeful in any circumstances and has the power of seeing the best even in a worse situation. A positive attitude creates positive thoughts, energy, and outcomes. It works as an incentive to create extraordinary results.
As a leader, you need to maintain a positive vibe around you as well. For example, maybe you are having a tough time, but still, you put up a big smile on your face and say good morning to your co-workers. Individuals with a positive attitude looking for good instead of bad in people. You can develop a positive mental attitude with few simple changes.
Honest and reliable
Honesty gives you freedom and makes you different from thousands of other people. It’s not about telling the truths only, it’s about being honest with you and shows others who you are.
Honesty strictness our perception and brings fairness, which allows us to observe everything around us with a lot of clarity and quickly solves many problems.
Being honest gives you the edge of being a reliable person. A reliable person is someone who does exactly what you expect them to do. They are accountable and, if they lead others, holds their team members accountable as well.
Empathy
The ability to feel other people’s emotions or what they are experiencing is called empathy. If we can understand how others feel, it will be much easier to respond appropriately to the situation.
True leaders can clearly understand their disciples and what’s going on in their minds as well. So, it becomes easy for them to use their words and actions ideally.
Extraordinary leaders even help their companions save their faces if they commit any mistakes and make the faults easy to correct. They praise in public and address problems in private. An excellent, empathetic skill is a crucial characteristic of leadership. What can be more critical than understanding others?
Calmness and confidence
Neuroscience has revealed that remaining calm in pressure and perplexed situations is not an inborn skill, but anybody can learn. Staying calm helps you to reason and make decisions accordingly.
And don’t we know the importance of confidence? If you are confident with something, you are most likely going to make it. If you are not, then the chance is near zero. It gives you the power to trust your choices or ideas, provokes you to speak consciously and with clarity. When things aren’t going right, your men will look for comfort and support, and it’s you whose composure will relax them.
Self-awareness
Being a leader, it is crucial to understand how others perceive you and how you show up yourself to others. Self-awareness gives you that power, as well as justifies your thought, emotion, and action.
If you understand yourself better, you can better discover your strengths and weaknesses and act upon them smartly. The better you understand yourself, the more efficient you will be.
A great communicator
A leader’s first visible weapon is his words, powerful words to be exact. He is a good listener and can read people’s minds more or less, and understand circumstances more than anyone else. He speaks clearly and concisely to represent any ideas or discussions appropriately.
Maybe you have noticed that there are individuals who magically describe things. Even the most complicated issues become more straightforward and easy to understand. When you are in communication with them, somehow you feel more relaxed, enthusiastic, and motivated. So, communicating effectively is not only one of the required characteristics of leadership; instead, it’s a vital life skill.
Responsibility
Having a sense of responsibility brings confidence to your acquaintances about yourself. Everyone feels comfortable working with a responsible person and doesn’t dare to follow their instructions in any situation. It’s a characteristic that builds leaders.
Every decision we make never brings success always. A leader is fearless enough to take responsibility if any complexity arises. He is always willing to admit mistakes made by him or his/her team. He is a master problem solver as his responsibility forces him to do so.
Ability to delegate
In simple words, delegation means assigning authority or responsibility to another person to carry out specific activities or perform tasks.You cannot think of being a leader without being discreet in delegating tasks to the appropriate individuals.
You cannot perform all the things single-handedly, actually, no one does as they have other activities to perform which carries higher value. You will need associates to perform tasks for you. Delegation gives leaders more free time for strategic thinking and enables them to focus on tasks that can be only performed by themselves.
Creativity
In simple words, delegation means assigning authority or responsibility to another person to carry out specific activities or perform tasks. You cannot think of being a leader without being discreet in delegating tasks to the appropriate individuals.
Creative thinking sometimes results in innovative ideas that can change the world. It senses new possibilities and alternative solutions as well. If you feel you aren’t creative enough, you shouldn’t worry because difficult situations give birth to creative ideas.
Vision
If someone doesn’t know where he or she is going, how will he or she guide an entire group of people? Vision distinguishes leaders from ordinary ones. Leaders know precisely where they are going, what they are trying to accomplish, and which strategy they will apply.
A clear vision generates direction, short and long-term goals and justifies decisions in between them. Leaders can look into the future, can imagine the possibilities that others can’t.
A great influencer
If your thoughts and actions can influence others to dream big, work harder, and learn new things passionately, then you are a leader. Don’t diversify the meaning. Influencing is different from manipulating. You have to inspire people with actual logical facts and cooperative appeals. Exaggeration of truth is a self-destructing weapon. Once others detect it will destroy your image.
As a leader, the most challenging job is to persuade others to follow in your footsteps. Only the power of words won’t help you much until you motivate your subordinates by setting examples yourself. When things aren’t going right, they will notice how you react to the situations. If you handle them well, they are going to follow you.
knowledge
Do you know what makes people different? You are right, knowledge it is! A leader is a decision-maker, a great strategist, prudent, and creative. Knowledge stimulates these skills directly and sharpens the other characteristics of leadership as well.
Nowadays, resources are everywhere and more precise. Blogs, google podcasts, books, TED Talks videos, and live seminars are the real opportunities to learn and gain knowledge.
Characteristics of leadership summary
Leadership is a phenomenon you have to inherit gradually. If you want to be a great leader, you have to go beyond practicing these 12 characteristics of leadership. You should start by concentrating on a single issue and be present.
Remember one thing; when you will be a successful leader someday, the most significant challenges will come then. The challenge to remain the real you, the challenge to keep aside ill thinking comes from greed, and the challenge to remain honest as you were.