7 Best Leadership Qualities For A Successful Business
We all understand that Global competition is high. It’s not easy for every company to create a position in the market, even if it does create a position, it’s hard for them to sustain their position. A great company thrives and creates an impact on the global market, based on its strong leadership qualities.
Today we are going to look at the best leadership qualities in a person. Leaders like Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, Elon Musk, etc. with their foresight, unshakable determination, and persistent efforts led their respective companies to success.
In this blog, we are not going to discuss them, or their stories, but the standards that helped them to bring their companies to significant heights.
Let’s see what exactly is the definition of leadership…
According to Warren Bennis
“Leadership is an extent to translate the vision into realism.”
General Montgomery says,
‘It is the scope and the will to regroup men and women to a common purpose and the nature which cultivates confidence.’
If you Google the term you will find thousands and hundreds of search results, which shows endless definitions by great minds and business leaders. After reading several stories and evaluating various definitions, I have developed an understanding that leadership can influence individuals to believe, act, and work with perseverance to meet the grace.
We have seen both good and bad leadership in history and both, have adapted some specific set of qualities and those are the defining pillars of the nature of their leadership. We can use the learnings from those masters to develop commendable strengths.
Seven leadership qualities played a major role in life and helped them to reach their accomplishments. You can develop these traits and with inscribed practice and recurrence, you can comprehend them.
These are the leadership qualities that will help you become a good leader:
- Vision
- Strategic planning
- Courage
- Integrity
- Humility
- Focus
- Cooperation
Great personalities know how to find the balance between business intuition, creation, and virtue. They have clarity, courage, integrity, modesty, and focus along with the ability to plan strategically and catalyze association amongst their team.
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Leadership Qualities #1 – Vision
Management has a lot to do with answers. Leadership is a function of questions. And always the first question for a leader is not ‘What are we going to do?’ but ‘Who do we intend to be?
To achieve success one must know where they want to reach. He should always ask questions and in this case, the correct question is “Who do we intend to be?”. This means having a clear picture of your business is important and makes further processes easier.
At one time, Star Wars was only a thought in the brain of George Lucas, however, now the Force is as solid as it could be expected. J.K. Rowling had a dream of Harry Potter and now he’s a notorious piece of our general public — and as genuine as a thrill ride in Universal Studios. John F. Kennedy had an ambition for launching a man to the moon. Ronald Reagan saw the Berlin Wall descend before it disintegrated. Steve Jobs envisioned the iPod and iPhone sometime before the world was dependent on them. Abraham Lincoln imagined an assembled America. Martin Luther King, Jr., had a fantasy about correspondence.
Once you have a clear picture of what you want, you can plan different ways to achieve it and select the best way to accomplish it.
A good leader always has a vision and they know how to achieve it.
Leadership Qualities #2 – Strategic planning
Strategic planning is the constant activity of making present entrepreneurial (risk-taking) decisions systematically and with the powerful knowledge of their futurity; organizing thoroughly the efforts needed to execute these decisions; and estimating the results of these decisions against the expectations through ordered, systematic feedback.
Strategic planning is one of the most important leadership traits.
Good leaders are outstanding strategy planners. They understand how to track the market. They study the market and based on these studies they make predictions that help them to navigate the market’s direction. So, a great strategically planned company can reach the highest of the peaks within no time.
Let’s understand the concept and importance of vision and strategic planning from a short and simple story:
Once upon a period there lived 3 fishes in a lake. One was called “Plan Ahead”, another was “Think Fast”, and the third was called “Sit back and watch”. One day they heard an angler say that he planned to project his net in their lake the following day.
Plan Ahead said, “I’m swimming down the waterway around evening time!” thus he did.
Think Fast said, “I’m certain I’ll concoct an arrangement.”
Sit back and watch apathetically said, “I can’t consider it now!”
At the point when the angler cast his nets, Plan Ahead was a distant memory. In any case, “Think Fast” and “Sit back and watch” were caught!
Think Fast immediately moved his paunch up and professed to be dead. “Goodness, this fish is nothing but bad!” said the angler, and tossed him securely back into the water. In any case, sit back and watch wound up in the fish market.
That is the reason they say, “amid peril, when the net is projected, Plan Ahead or plan to think quick!”
A chief always has a plan and strategy ready to achieve their vision. They visualize their imagination themselves and also share it with the individual to see the big picture and make them believe in their foresight. They know where they are exactly heading. They go above and beyond to explain why they are moving in that particular direction and always follow this strategy and the plan to achieve their vision.
They have a clear, stirring notion of where they are going and they understand what they are trying to execute, and are excellent strategic planners.
Leadership Qualities # 3 – Courage
You need to see what real courage is, instead of thinking that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re defeated before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.
Leadership asks for taking risks and taking risks involves bold decisions. A good chief should be courageous enough to take risks to achieve their goals with no assurance of success. Because there is no certainty in business and in life too, every decision you take involves some kind of risk.
It can be hard to express your opinions in the workplace. Be it raising some concerns about a decision taken by another team member or providing feedback to a live report. Expressing these things can be difficult for people and that’s why having courage is also a significant quality of a leader. A good chief knows how to use his courageous nature and how to express his opinion without hurting the person in the question to take the organization in the right direction.
Leadership Qualities #4 – Integrity
We learned about honesty and integrity – that the truth matters… that you don’t take shortcuts or play by your own set of rules… and success doesn’t count unless you earn it fair and square.
The importance of integrity should be obvious though you may or may not use it as a metric for employee evaluation. I think it is important for a person and an organization too.
It is the first and foremost important value and every industry expert will agree upon it. As I said earlier it is the most important quality for an individual working in an organization especially the top-level executives who chart the Journey of the organization and take the most important decisions which ultimately decide the company’s present and future. Integrity is directly associated with trust. It asks for openness and truth. Corporates want their employees to be truthful under any circumstances. Truthfulness develops trust which is necessary for the success of any business. A leader should reinforce the importance of integrity to people at various levels in the organization.
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Leadership Qualities #5 – Humility
This is one of the most required leadership qualities in an individual. Take a moment and try to define humility. The first few thoughts will be about encouraging others and giving enough credit to their job; appreciating their efforts and helping them to improve, and also having an understanding that you may not be able to solve every problem. Accepting your flaws and recognizing the limits of your expertise and so inviting others into the conversation willingly is very important. But this is not just it, there is more to it. The broader definition of this term is “a self-view that something greater than the self exists”.
Have more humility. Think of it, you don’t know the extent of your abilities. Successful or not, if you keep working hard, you will improve your own life–and maybe even please a few strangers.
A humble manager shares the ability to concede their strengths and limitations; appreciate the efforts of other individuals without letting their ego get in the way; apologize when they are in the wrong; and avoid being defensive, assertive, or domineering. For a team manager, it can be a difficult job to inspire individuals and make them follow you but also, it is the most important part of your job.
When your organization hits a low, people look up to you, and they observe you and your actions. If you can tackle this situation with a positive attitude, then individuals will start following you, they will start trusting your actions. As a leader, you should keep a positive attitude, and your positive attitude should be visible in your actions. As John Quincy Adams puts it, “If your activities inspire others to think more, understand more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” If you are successful in inspiring your team members then you can overcome any difficult situation that may occur in the future.
A team manager should develop empathy with their followers and their teammates, but unfortunately, most of the leaders select a dictatorial style that does more harm than good. They should make a closer connection with their teammates, and they should take efforts on making a better connection with their teammates and solve their problems. If you solve their problems, they will be able to work more productively.
Here’s a short story explaining it,
A successful businessman was growing old and realized, the time has come to pick a replacement to assume control over the business. Rather than picking one of his chiefs or his kids, he chose to accomplish something else. He called all the youthful executives in his organization together.
He said, “It is the ideal opportunity for me to venture down and pick the following CEO. I have chosen to pick one of you.” The youthful heads were stunned, yet the businessman proceeded, “I will give every last one of you a seed today – an extraordinary one. I need you to harvest it, water it, and come back here one year from today with what you have developed from it. I will at that point judge the plants that you bring, and the one I pick will be the following CEO.”
One man, named Jim, was there that day and he, similar to the others, got the seeds. He returned home and enthusiastically told his wife the story. She assisted him with getting a pot, soil, and fertilizer and he planted them. Routinely, he would water it and watch to check whether it had developed. After around three weeks, a portion of different heads started to discuss their growing plants.
He continued checking his pot, yet nothing ever developed. Three weeks, a month, five weeks passed by, as yet nothing. At this point, others were discussing their plants, however, he didn’t have a plant and he felt like a disappointment.
A half-year passed by — as yet nothing in Jim’s pot. He just realized he had murdered his seed. Every other person had trees and tall plants, however, he didn’t have anything. He didn’t utter a word to his associates, notwithstanding, he just continued watering and preparing the dirt. He so needed it to grow into a plant.
A year passed by and the chief executive officer requested that the youthful chiefs carry their plants to the office for review.
At the point when Jim told his wife that he wasn’t going to take a vacant pot, she asked him to be truthful about what occurred. He felt wiped out to his stomach, it would have been the most humiliating snapshot of his life, however, he realized his wife was correct. He took his vacant pot to the conference room.
At the point when Jim showed up, he was stunned at the assortment of plants developed by different chiefs. They were delightful – in all shapes and sizes. He put his vacant pot on the floor and a large number of his partners snickered, a couple of them felt sad about him!
At the point when the CEO showed up, he studied the room and welcomed his young chiefs. Jim just attempted to stow away in the back. “My, what incredible plants, trees, and blossoms you have developed,” said the CEO. “Today one of you will be named the following CEO!”
Out of nowhere, he spotted Jim at the rear of the room with his vacant pot. The chief requested the man to go to the front of the room, he was scared. He thought, “The CEO knows, I’m a disappointment! Perhaps he will have me terminated!”
At the point when he got to the front, the CEO asked him what had befallen his seed. He revealed his story. The CEO requested that everybody plunk down aside from him. The businessman took a look at him, and afterwards reported to the youthful heads, “View your next Chief Executive Officer — Jim!”
“How is it possible, he couldn’t develop his seed?” the others said.
At that point, the CEO said, “One year back today, I gave everybody in this room a seed. I advised you to take it, plant it, water it, and take it back to me today. In any case, I gave all of you bubbled seeds; they were dead – it was unrealistic for them to develop.
“Every one of you, aside from Jim, have brought me trees and plants and blossoms. At the point when you found that it would not develop, you subbed another seed for the one I gave you. Jim was the just one with the fortitude and genuineness to present to me a pot with my seed in it. In this manner, he is the person who will be the new Chief Executive Officer!”
In this way, be cautious about what you plant now; it will figure out what you will procure later.
Integrity is important – Believe it, you will grow!
Leadership Qualities #6 – Focus
Successful people keep a positive focus in life whatever is going on around them. They stay focused on their previous successes rather than their previous failures, and on the next action steps, they should get them nearer to the accomplishment of their goals rather than all the other distractions that life gives out to them.
A leader should adopt the quality of focusing on the most important things. He should focus on the strengths of the firm, on the result, and on what they should achieve for the firm. They should focus on what should be achieved by other individuals to keep the firm active. They should keep the focus on where the company is leading. They should be able to focus on a company’s strengths and the strength of each individual working for the company. They should understand what the company is good at and how to place themselves in the market to provide supreme quality services to their customers. They should have the ability to understand the strength of each individual and how their strength can be used by the company to maintain excellent performance.
Leadership Qualities #7 – Cooperation
If your thinking leads you to learn how fast people grant your requests when those requests appeal to their self-interest, you can have nearly anything you go after.
Getting the job done with proper cooperation with your team and making them work for you with a positive attitude and enthusiasm are essential qualities of a good commander. We can apply the 80-20 rule here. For those who don’t understand what the 80-20 rule is, it is also known as the Pareto Principle, this rule suggests that 20 per cent of your activities will account for 80 per cent of your results.
By using this rule we can say that 80% of your results are because of the contribution of work done by your twenty per cent people. You need to select these people very carefully and you should be able to work with them daily for the smooth functioning of your company. You need to have a healthy conversation with your people to build trust. Having a conversation with key people daily will help you to achieve smooth cooperation.
You cannot do everything, a chief must understand this. He should be able to delegate tasks to his subordinates. Micromanaging every task your subordinates do will result in a lack of trust and most importantly you will be having less time to spend on the thing which matters the most. Delegate the tasks to your teammates and see how they perform. Provide them with all the resources and encouragement and give them a chance to complete the responsibility.
Concluding thought on leadership Qualities
A great Vision gives clarity and helps to set the goals; Strategic Planning makes a systematic approach to achieve the goal; Courage helps to cope with problems and find solutions with clarity; Integrity keeps the chief ground to earth and helps him work with ethics at his highs and lows of business which keeps him in terms with reality; Humility brings more productivity among employees as they feel connected with their chiefs; Focus keeps away all the distractions that can change the track of achieving the goal, and finally Cooperation with partners and employees will make a healthy environment to work in. All of these together can make for great leadership qualities and can make for a great leader and in turn a successful business.
