manage a team of employees or just run an
effective neighborhood meeting, you understand
the challenges of leadership on a personal level.
You’re expected to have the answers to every
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question, you’re responsible for inspiring and
motivating people (no matter how unmotivated
they started), and worst of all, there’s no one
above you to turn to for advice or direction—it all
has to come from you.
There’s no blueprint for how to become a
successful leader, and there’s evidence on both
sides of the argument for whether great leaders
are born or made. You can’t expect to
naturally be an effective leader, nor can you ever
expect to become a perfect leader. But if you
study the qualities of a leader from examples of
the past and scientific evidence, you can steer
your behavior, your habits and your outlook in a
more favorable direction.
So let’s take a look—what does it take to become
a great leader?
1. Hold firm convictions to
inspire followers and radiate
confidence.
Holding firm convictions means you’ll be almost
stubborn in your adherence to your values,
beliefs and vision for the future. That doesn’t
mean you ignore people when they disagree with
you (in fact, as you’ll see, flexibility is important),
but it does mean you have significant integrity,
and you’re likely to stay true to your values, no
matter what happens.
Research shows a high correlation between
uncertainty and stress; if your employees
aren’t sure what you’re going to think about a
new idea, or if they feel like you change your
positions too frequently, they may not be able to
focus on their jobs or be as productive as they
could. They might also have less respect for you
as a leader.
There’s a famous anecdote about Apple co-
founder Steve Jobs that demonstrates his
ruthless convictions. when introducing a
prototype of the iPhone, a friend criticized the
touch keyboard, stating that users would strongly
prefer traditional keyboards on their phones.
Jobs’s response was “they’ll get used to it.”
He’d already made up his mind, and was sure
this was the correct path forward.
How to get started
To get started with this one, think carefully about
which values and visions matter most to you.
Then, frame them in your mind as unbreakable.
2. Use emotional intelligence
(EQ) to improve both client and
employee relationships.
Emotional intelligence (or EQ) is your ability to
understand both your own emotions and the
emotions of others. It gives you more control
over your own emotional states, meaning you’re
less influenced by raw feelings and it allows you
to handle interpersonal relationships with your
employees with more empathy.
One study within a Fortune 400 insurance
company found that individuals with high
emotional intelligence received more merit
increases, held higher company ranks and got
better ratings from both peers and superiors.
This is attributable to EQ’s many benefits. These
employees have better control over their own
emotions and behaviors, work better with other
people and are able to quickly resolve conflicts
before they get out of hand.
How to get started
Getting started may prove difficult here. While
some people naturally have high emotional
intelligence, others take years to fully develop it.
If you’re just getting started, spend time paying
attention to what other people are feeling and
ask yourself why they’re feeling it. Regular
periods of introspection will also help.
3. Master the art of
communication to operate more
efficiently (and boost morale).
Communication unfolds in many ways during
your tenure as a leader. You’ll be leading in-
person meetings, holding phone calls with clients
and sending emails regularly. You’ll also be a
part of heavy conversations, whether it’s
breaking bad news to a client or firing an
employee. Learning to communicate effectively is
crucial to your success.
Ask any leader what the most valuable skills for
success are, and they’ll likely list communication
skills among them. Billionaire and serial
entrepreneur Richard Branson, for example, has
called communication “the most important skill
any leader can possess.”
Communication not only makes processes run
smoother (thanks to efficient transmission of
instructions and details), but also allows you to
convey mood and urgency through your tone.
Accordingly, it has objective and subjective
impacts on your audience.
How to get started
Email is the easiest place to gain mastery here
since you’ll have time to think through your
sentences and use email productivity hacks to
get even better.
Pay attention to your purpose, wording, and tone,
and experiment until you find the right
combination.
When speaking, try to speak slower and think
through your sentences carefully. You’ll appear
more confident and buy time to find exactly the
right words for any situation.
4. Always favor action over
inaction to preserve your
team’s momentum.
Great leaders typically have the mentality that
action is favorable to inaction. If you’re facing a
problem, procrastinating is the worst thing you
can do. Instead, commit to moving forward
however you can, even if that means making a
temporary “duct tape fix,” or even making a
mistake.
U.S. President Harry S. Truman is quoted as
once saying,
This is the man who dropped the atomic bomb—
an action that’s been criticized for ending
thousands of innocent lives, but also praised for
possibly preventing even further casualties
worldwide. It was a risky and heavy decision, but
one that kept things moving forward.
How to get started
When you’re facing a problem or a decision point,
think carefully about your options, and start
leaning away from options that don’t require
action (i.e., “let’s wait a month,” or “let’s keep
things the way they are for a while.”)
5. Be diplomatic to encourage
new ideas and thorough
discussion.
As important as it is to stay true to your
convictions, it’s a terrible idea to lead through
dictatorship. Instead, be diplomatic and
encourage your employees to bring their ideas to
the table—even if they outright contradict your
own. Open discussions and listen to every idea
that comes across your desk.
Many companies have made it a general policy
to encourage ideas from their employees from
the ground up. Google, for example, for a period
of many years, gave its employees 20 percent of
their working hours to work on any kind of
projects they wanted to.
And according to Dan Glaser of Marsh and
McLennan Companies,
“We have found that innovative ideas bubble up
when you tap into an element of dissent.”
The research here indicates that companies that
not only allow, but encourage and take
advantage of disagreement, stand to benefit
greatly.
How to get started
You can encourage this behavior by giving every
employee time to express their ideas, whether
it’s in meetings or a private setting. When you
disagree, don’t cut down the idea; make a case
for why yours is stronger and thank the
employee for voicing their opinion.
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The “safer” it is to voice a dissenting opinion, the
more your employees will be willing to do it.
Some more tips to help you make your team feel
safe here.
6. Remain humble and admit
your mistakes to discourage
resentment or intimidation.
Not all of your strategies and decisions are going
to work out. Learning to admit your mistakes and
note the flaws in your thinking can actually be a
strength. If you pretend you’re perfect or refuse
to admit to your mistakes, one of two things will
happen: your employees will become resentful of
you, believing you to be narcissistic or delusional
or they’ll be intimidated by you, thinking that
mistakes are unacceptable.
At least one study has found that CEOs who
demonstrate humility tend to perform better than
their counterparts. When a CEO is
approachable, fallible and humble about their
status, employees are more appreciative.
Workplaces tend to be calmer and more unified,
and leaders earn more respect.
How to get started
Humility is hard to teach but you can embody its
core principles. If you make a mistake, admit it
and laugh it off, and don’t be afraid to let down
your guard in front of your employees. You’re
human too. In fact, showing vulnerability actually
proves your strength.
7. Use patience to stabilize
your emotions and make more
logical and long-term
decisions.
Stabilize your emotions when making decisions,
and steer those decisions toward the most
logical long-term approach. The most effective
marketing strategies, for example, take months
to years of time for development, but if you’re
hasty and emotional in your decision-making,
you might opt for a short-term strategy that
yields rewards quickly, but has no distant future.
Jeff Bezos is one powerful anecdotal example
here, almost every decision he makes as CEO is
done with the future in mind. Amazon is one
of the most powerful and respected companies
in the world, yet it doesn’t make much of a profit.
Its excess revenue is constantly funneled back
into the company to help it grow into new
markets and investigate new opportunities for
expansion.
How to get started
Before making a decision or choosing a path
forward, remove yourself from the situation.
Pretend you’re an unbiased onlooker and think
about how you’d advise a stranger in this same
situation. Then, imagine the consequences not
just a week from now, but a month, a year and a
decade from now.
8. Stay organized to set a good
example for your employees.
Leaders are busy, so small levels of organization
may seem like an unnecessary waste of time.
However, staying organized is important not just
for your own productivity, but also for your
employees—who will be looking to you as an
example.
This idea is illustrated by the fact that 75 percent
of office workers believe that a disorganized
office is a sign of deeper problems within a
company. If your desk is cluttered with
papers, or if they can see your email inbox has
2,000 unread messages, they may believe
something is wrong with the company—or with
your approach as a leader. They may also have
an excuse to be disorganized in their own roles,
which can lead to even more productivity
problems.
How to get started
Start paying closer attention to how you organize
yourself and try to consistently present a clean,
tidy image—even if things are more chaotic
beneath the surface. Keep track of your own
productivity and schedule 15 minutes a day to
keeping your work and belongings organized.
9. Empower your employees to
become leaders in their own
realms.
You may be the head honcho of the organization
but your business will run far smoother if you
allow the people beneath you to be leaders of
their own domains. Empower them to make their
own decisions, discipline and reward their own
underlings, and communicate how they see fit.
This will take some of the pressure off you,
improve the morale of the people you’ve inspired,
and add more diverse opinions and approaches
to your company culture.
Several amazing leaders have taken this
approach. Elon Musk, for example, recently
wrote an email to his staff about the importance
of employee empowerment. In it, he
describes managers, in general, as a “bad idea.”
In his view, every person within the company
should take ownership of their own
responsibilities and be empowered to make
decisions and take risks as any leader would.
Former President Ronald Reagan, as another
example, is quoted as saying,
It’s a policy many presidents have taken to
heart.
How to get started
It’s hard to introduce this idea to a workplace
that’s been without it, but you can start by telling
your managers and employees how much you
trust them. Delegate decisions to them and don’t
micromanage.
Set expectations in meetings and in individual
employee reviews that you trust your employees
to make their own decisions. When they start
moving forward, making their own decisions,
reward them for their independence and
confidence to encourage the behavior even
further.
This guide can help you to know how to delegate
works for the best:
10. Be decisive to demonstrate
your authority.
Finally, exercise decisiveness to prove and
radiate your authority. Leaders are primarily
decision makers, which means you’ll be held
accountable for the outcomes of those decisions,
however they come.
Great leaders aren’t afraid to face the
consequences, especially during periods of
uncertainty. Instead, they make decisions
quickly based on all the evidence they can
gather, and hold firm to those decisions. This not
only makes you appear more authoritative, it
encourages more decisiveness and resolve
within your employees as well.
Successful leaders are shown to be more
decisive than their less successful counterparts.
This could be due to any number of
secondary effects. For example, it could be that
decisive leaders are better decision-makers
overall, thinking through problems more
comprehensively. It could also be that decisive
leaders are more confident and inspire more
from their underlings.
How to get started
Despite the advantages here, you still shouldn’t
rush your decisions. Gather as much information
as you can in a situation and pull the trigger as
soon as you think it’s appropriate.
Delaying a decision or presenting yourself as “on
the fence” can weaken your position. Changing
your mind on a decision after it’s already been
made (like allowing an employee to convince you
not to fire him/her) will compromise your
projected authority.
Making decisions under pressure is hard,
Understand leaders to become
a great leader
There are many different styles of leadership to
consider, so naturally, these qualities of a leader
may transform as you come into your own
approach. But, how you use them isn’t nearly as
important as understanding them and learning
from them.
The better you know and understand the leaders
who have come before you, the more tools you’ll
have to shape your own style of leadership and
become successful in any application you
choose.
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