Traits of a Leader

Is someone in a senior position necessarily a good leader? Not quite. A good leader is someone who has the traits, the qualities, and the attitude which compels others to follow him. He or she does not feel the need to emphasize on the fact that they are leaders. In fact, they may not even be designated as leaders or a manager in the company, but it is his personality which compels people to follow him. Hence, if you want people to follow you, you first need to know and internalize the personality traits of a leader, which will make people look up to you and follow you!

Top 10 Marks of a Leader

Setting an Example
After all, a leader expects the team to follow him, so he ought to set the standard, the performance benchmark himself. He needs to personify all the behavior he expects from his team. He should be able to, as they say, walk the talk and inspire respect from his team members instead of demanding it.

Goal Setting
Goal setting in indeed an underrated quality these days. People harp a lot about goal setting, but not too many seem to really take it seriously. But then again, it is their job to instill these qualities in his team. But for this, the leader himself ought to possess this characteristic! Hence being able to fix and follow goals is one of his most vital characteristic.

Communication Skills
A leader is often the customer or client facing representative of the company. Whether it is sealing an important deal or giving press conferences, a good leader needs to have good communication skills. People naturally gravitate towards a person with good communication skills and hence they are an important asset in his armory.

People Skills
A leader should have good people skills. He should know how to motivate his team and how to extract the best out of each team member. He should be well aware of the individual capabilities of his team members and utilize them in the best possible way. A leader should also be able to provide guidance to under-performing team members so that the entire team does well.

Visionary
A leader should have a compelling vision, and with his communication skills as outlined above, should be able to convey his vision to his team members so that they too work to achieve the dream. He should be able to make it a shared dream, rather than an individual dream.

Ability to Work in a Team
Carrying the previous point forward, a leader is essentially someone who has the ability to work in a team. After all, he is leading them! He should be able to coordinate the activities of all his team members and make sure that they work towards achieving the shared vision.

High Performance Standards
Undoubtedly, the leader has to be the best performer in the team and also contribute to the team with his superior experience and people skills. He should be a hardworking person, driven and achievement oriented, all of which will contribute to superior performance standards which he should set for his team members.

Making Decisions
One of the most important traits of a good leader is the ability to take good, shrewd decisions, on time. Often a leader and his team have benefited by making good an unusual decision. A leader should be able to exercise his experience and expertise and be able to take decisions which will bring quantifiable benefits to his team.

Honesty and Fairness
Another very underrated quality of a good leader are honesty and integrity. He must be honest with his work and fair with the distribution of rewards. He should not show favoritism towards any team members and should treat them all equally.

Enthusiasm
And the last but not the least in this list of effective leadership traits is enthusiasm. He should enjoy what he does, otherwise he'll never be able to show the above abilities. Only when he enjoys his works and is enthusiastic about it, will he and his team do well. An enthusiastic leader helps spread positivity in the team and raises the performance of the entire team.

They say most leaders are born, not made, but if you can internalize these important aspects, then who's to say? You too might become the next big thing in corporate management!