ESSENTIAL VALUES FOR GREAT LEADERS

If you’ve come to the point in your career where you are looking to become a team leader, a supervisor or a manager then we have a great article for you. We take a look at the essential qualities that all great leaders have.

If you have your eye on becoming a leader, or are about to be promoted into a team leader or supervisor role, there are a key set of qualities you need to be successful.

Great leaders have a style that allows them to connect with their team and get the very best out of them to achieve results. This comes from developing some key qualities that they put at the heart of their management style, know to be effective. These qualities and principles help to guide their professional lives and are also useful in their personal lives too. Often these qualities come from a set of values that set how you are perceived as a leader by your team.

So why is it important to develop these qualities? They will help you set your goals, define the type of leader you want to be and guide the actions you take on a daily basis. The qualities you develop will also help you grow too. They will also help you build and gel a team together to achieve the goals you set. As a great leader you will want to influence your team, so they perform to a very high standard. Developing these essential qualities helps to build respect and trust within your team.

Quality 1: Influence

This is the ability to encourage, motivate and guide others to think and act in a particular way to achieve your goals. It’s a key characteristic of leadership. Why? It’s the ability to empower others into choosing the actions and behaviour that will achieve your goals without having to micromanage them.

Quality 2: Vision

Vision is very important as it defines your goals and objectives. It also sets out how you will achieve these. It links into the first essential quality because it will help you communicate that to your team. You’ll be able to provide an understanding of what success looks like and how they can achieve that. You’ll be able to clearly show them your vision and why it is important to help the company achieve its goals and the role your team will play in that.  

Quality 3: Honesty

This is a quality that is essential for building trust, both amongst your team and your managers. You need to be able to discuss topics with others in a clear and truthful manner. Transparency is a very valuable quality that is supported by honesty. When there are problems to be solved or rewards promised for great performance, your team needs to know they can rely upon what you say and promise.  Ultimately this builds trust and respect, making you a much more effective leader and someone people will want to work for.

Quality 4: Passion

This quality can be infectious. It should be what fulfils and motivates you. It keeps you going even when you are facing challenges or unexpected setbacks. When you are genuinely passionate about the work you do, your team members will see this. It helps to inspire them, motivate them and ultimately increase productivity across the team.

Quality 5: Dedication

Dedication is about being committed to your goals and working hard towards them. You’ll find all great leaders are dedicated to their company, their team and the work they do. They demonstrate this by following through on promises and being persistent to achieve their goals. Like being passionate, this often rubs off amongst team members.

Quality 6: Empathy

Empathy is about understanding the feelings and emotions of others. It’s also about demonstrating you understand their feelings, not just by telling them, but by how you respond to their behaviours and actions. Empathy is key to emotional intelligence, which is how you understand and control your personal feelings and emotions. This helps build genuine connections with your team. 1. Resilience

Quality 7: Resilience

This is the ability to face adversity and recover quickly from setbacks and unexpected challenges. It’s important that you are focussed on your goals and achieving them. Building resilience helps you tackle problems and improve efficiency.

On your career path into leadership and management, take time to develop these key qualities. If you start now, you’ll find that you’ll get into leadership roles faster. You’ll also start to understand that these qualities are being developed constantly during your leadership roles to make you increasingly effective.