How to Be a Leader
Leadership is a misunderstood and misused concept that people aspire to without knowing what it really means. Here are the essential qualities every leader should have.
Running a coaching and consulting practice for almost a decade required me to have a high level of self-awareness. Because it's hard to support others in their development when you aren't in a good place yourself. Part of my ongoing personal growth journey is being real about who I am, what matters most, and what drives and inspires me.
Despite advising entrepreneurs and executives, I feel good openly admitting that my definition of leadership differs from what is traditionally accepted. Here is my list of the essential qualities every leader should have.
You are comfortable working with others
Teamwork. Team meetings. Team calls. Team huddles. Team building. To be a leader you must be collaborative, socially adept, and have the ability to thrive in the midst of teams and groups. A critical quality of leadership is to actually like constantly being around people.
I’m perplexed by leaders who are socially awkward, have low emotional intelligence, and lack charisma. If you don't have a knack for connecting with people and get energy from these types of settings, it could mean that leadership is not for you.
Some may argue that you can work on improving your skills and evolve over time. Of course you can, but no amount of training will completely change the essence of who you are as a person. And why should it? Why not embrace your innate abilities instead of ignoring them to pursue roles that don't suit you?
You want to develop people more than ideas
I enjoy coaching and consulting because it doesn’t necessitate probing and prodding someone into doing something. As an advisor, the most important role is to be a purveyor of ideas for clients to consider, then integrate those ideas into action plans they can carry out themselves.
Some people are avid thinkers and value ideas over everything. They don't want to influence people. They want to develop ideas so powerful that they influence people. Yet the thing about leadership positions, at least in business, is that a disproportionate amount of time is spent worrying about others.
As a leader you don’t have as much time to be a strategist, a creative, or a marketer, because you must spend your time rallying the team to achieve these goals. You may be a visionary only 20% of the time because the other 80% is needed to actively train and manage your team to ensure they can carry that vision out.
It's a rare person who can build teams and ideas without shortcutting on one or the other. So at some point you will need to determine whether idea development or people development gives you the most fulfillment.
You want to emulate someone above you
For a person to want something, they have to have a seed of desire planted in them and watered over time. Likewise, with leadership there has to have been someone who influenced you to the level of wanting to emulate at least some part of their path.
In the absence of this you may not know what it really takes to lead and lead well, because you’ve never been exposed to a great leader. Lack of inspiration from the top is one of the main reasons why many people leave the corporate world to venture out on their own (though even in entrepreneurship you can benefit from a role model).
Even if you aren’t the easiest person to impress or influence, you at least need a couple of solid leadership examples to serve as north stars. As the desire to be a leader typically comes from observing another leader and being inspired by their abilities.
You have been led well yourself
When you merely manage, your mind is set on the task at hand. You plan, organize, and coordinate to ensure you check the boxes on time. Though you may care about your team, you are primarily productivity-focused and people are one, of many, sets of resources that help you complete a project.
However, when you lead you don't just see tasks and projects but a greater vision. You understand that in order to add real value you need to bring out the best in your team. You accomplish this by using emotional intelligence to understand each of them as unique contributors to the higher cause.
As a result of this understanding you recognize how to influence and inspire, empower and motivate, while accomplishing all of the projects and tasks along the way. If you have not grown as a result of working under someone, you may need to align yourself with a great leader, before trying to become one, to get a firsthand view of how it’s done.
You prioritize others over yourself
A cliché image of leadership is the captain of a ship who goes down with it after saving everyone else on board as it sinks. Of course this is just one dramatic example of leadership, but it captures a critical concept: ultimate responsibility. When big problems arise, do you prefer to have the moral freedom to decide to save yourself or will you sacrifice yourself for the well-being of others?
When operating in a leadership capacity you should feel compelled to make decisions in the best interest of those looking up to you, instead of what's just best for you. If you don't want that kind of responsibility and couldn’t imagine yourself self-sacrificing, then you should rethink whether leadership is for you.
We all would like to believe that we are completely selfless beings, ready and willing to fearlessly lead our followers through troubled waters. But it’s ok if you are not. You don't need to be written up in the history books, instead watch Game of Thrones for an occasional dose of heroism.
Moreover, if your idea of leadership is bossing people around or getting a false sense of importance from egomaniacal behavior then you could also benefit from a reassessment of how you can add real value to other people's lives — in another more suitable capacity.
Many wannabe leaders are in it for the wrong reasons. They want power, money, titles, and status, but aren't ready to step up to the real challenges that come with having the livelihood of others in their hands. A leader spends more time serving others than demanding they be catered to. If you don't have a service mentality it is likely that your team or followers would not thrive under you.
Your ability to lead feels natural
The best leaders have a natural ability to (a) craft clear and focused visions, (b) develop consistent and disciplined methods for carrying these visions out, and (c) connect with and charm people into action. At the core of leadership is genuineness. The inauthentic leader has a difficult time with one or more of these traits because, in reality, they either don't like doing these things or just aren't good at them.
Some professionals don’t feel authentic when operating in a formal leadership capacity because their ability to do (a), (b), and (c) is not organic or perhaps only comes naturally in limited settings. But an organic leader doesn't have to hide behind a facade. These qualities aren't forced and, as a result, there is an air of refreshing simplicity in their style, even when dealing with complicated issues.
Don’t fret if you don't naturally have these essential leadership qualities. Perhaps accepting this vs. forcing yourself to be something you aren't will open the door to more fulfilling opportunities. It is also ok if your priority is to be a leader of self. In the mere act of mastering personal excellence you can indirectly inspire and influence many people, as an example rather than an authority figure.
Explore
According to Harvard Business Review, anyone can learn to be a better leader by mastering a set of core developmental strategies.
Many prominent academic institutions such as Stanford offer execute education programs with leadership courses and offerings that can help you improve your professional skills.
Outside of formal training, studying different disciplines such as philosophy and psychology is a great way to improve your leadership skills.
Take a personality test to understand your distinct leadership style so you can utilize your best qualities when interacting with your team.
If you are looking to master self-leadership, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is a classic book to start with.
Here's a roundup of movies about leadership if you prefer to learn by watching these skills in action.
This leadership toolkit by Berkeley contains a rich repository of resources that anyone can use to develop themselves or others.
