Four Leadership Qualities

For all the leadership training workshops, very few people can confidently explain how they take charge, engage others and develop their leadership skills.

“Why should anyone be led by you?” It’s a great question, as well as the title of an excellent September–October 2000 Harvard Business Review article coauthored by Robert Goffee and Gareth Jones.  It’s worth summarizing here.

Four Qualities

To be inspirational, leaders need four essential qualities besides vision and energy:

1. They selectively show their weaknesses. By exposing some vulnerability, exceptional leaders reveal their approachability and humanity.
2. They rely heavily on intuition to gauge the appropriate timing and course of their actions. Their ability to collect and interpret soft data helps them determine when and how to act.
3. They manage employees with “tough empathy.”  Inspirational leaders empathize passionately—yet realistically—with people, and they care intensely about the work employees do.
4. They reveal their differences. Effective leaders capitalize on what’s unique about themselves..

The focus here is not on financial results per se, but on how leaders capture the hearts, minds and energy of those who report to them.

Great results are hard to obtain without these qualities. That's why we will focus on each of these qualities in the next four leadership postings.