Sincerity and ability to inspire
The first difference is the principled approach to managing your team. An “ordinary” leader assigns a certain task to be completed, but a successful leader knows how to inspire it to be completed. This is his main responsibility - to be able to inspire and motivate his employees.
When discussing work issues, the leader uses not just arguments, he reinforces them with positive emotions. He tries to give a new emotional coloring to the usual “debriefings”. A successful leader does not play someone else’s role, but remains himself, with his own habits and emotions. And the team knows that he is sincere with them.
What qualities do leaders have: three main traits
Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, focuses on three aspects that he considers the basis of leadership:
- People,
- strategies,
- efficiency.
People come first and I support this approach. It is very important for me to understand the nature of actions, to distinguish true aspirations from useless vanity, and to adequately assess motivation. It is also extremely useful to develop emotional intelligence This is the basis for building high-quality communications, which in a business environment are components of success.
What else? Of course, a high level of personal motivation . There is no way without this. A leader does not wait for external incentives to act. He understands what he is working for and what goals he wants to achieve.
Unconditional professionalism and the ability to take responsibility for your decisions . What distinguishes a leader from an empowered person? The first, understanding his topic and making decisions, is ready to answer for a possible failure. The second one would rather throw up his hands and say that the circumstances turned out to be stronger.
Before we started work on creating the first Russian process mining class system, I studied the market, available solutions, and talked a lot with clients. But my team was not enthusiastic about the idea. There were a lot of doubts, the arguments against it sounded very convincing, I was aware of the risks and was ready for the consequences. We took up development, conducted pilots with large Russian companies, and in 2020 registered Proceset in the domestic software registry.
I identified these three qualities as fundamental for myself. You could say they are the foundation, and what you decide to build on it depends on your ambitions.
Enthusiasm and innovation
A leader must be not only a professional, but also an enthusiast of his work. Agree, it’s nice, for example, to watch when a restaurant manager himself greets visitors, smiles and wants to predict their desires, infecting waiters and bartenders with his enthusiasm. Such establishments usually have a welcoming and inviting atmosphere.
A successful leader is not only a competent administrator, but also an innovator. He can figure out how to implement a particular task using new technologies and tools. He communicates with his colleagues, participates in forums and discussions, studies, and discovers new ways of self-improvement.
He is a perfectionist in his field and is not afraid to select players for his team who can compete with him. Let your subordinates also be ambitious - he gives them the opportunity to be creative and encourages initiatives. Gives employees responsibility, delegates tasks to the manager, develops his team, and in return it brings dividends.
See also: Beginning manager: how not to make mistakes
Leadership theory: where it all began
If you ask random people without training what it means to be a leader in the modern world , we assume that many will answer that we are talking about an educated person who knows how to organize people.
It would seem that this is so, but with a huge number of educated people, as well as people who understand the principles of team organization, it is extremely difficult for recruiters and HR managers to find an effective team lead. Companies do not have enough people with the appropriate competencies; they need a person who can “pull” the tasks of motivating, inspiring, supporting, directing and controlling the team. In short, they need a leader. What does it consist of, real leadership, what is the development of leaders, what puzzles can it be put together, how to develop and strengthen it? Let's try to figure it out.
A leader is one who is different
In the animal world, the leader is larger and more visible. People also consider someone who stands out from the crowd to be a leader. How significant is this? Is Jeff Bezos, the richest man on the planet, different in appearance? He walked towards his goal for a long time and systematically and achieved his fortune with his work, intelligence, and talent to guide people. He can be called a great leader, he is one, but it is unlikely that he could be singled out in the crowd “by eye.”
However, leaders differ in character, and if you had to talk with such a person for a few minutes, you could probably note something that distinguishes him from the majority. Leadership is from within.
Leadership is a decision
The leader “turns on” at the moment the goal is born . And this is noticeable when interacting with him. A leader is felt and truly different from others.
The ability to lead others is not leadership. A leader is one who is fired up not by the goal of personal gain, but by the desire for the common good. The most important thing for a leader is to see how the lives of others change for the better.
Now let’s remember why many would like to become leaders. To increase social status, become rich, influential, feel power, lead people to achieve their desires. Can this be called leadership?
Over the years, leadership has acquired many meanings and interpretations, but this does not change the meaning of the concept.
Leadership theory dates back to 1840.
Trait theory
Thomas Carlyle's trait theory, first presented in a lecture in 1840, is considered the first attempt to describe leadership. The Scottish philosopher and teacher examined the characteristics of the greats - Shakespeare, Napoleon, Cromwell, etc. - and identified something in common. Thus emerged the idea that great leadership can be defined by certain abilities, and therefore these abilities can be acquired. Before this, leadership traits were considered innate.
After this, various scientists determined which qualities characterize a leader. The contribution of Ralph Melvin Stogdill, who declared that leadership qualities can be observed not only in the great, but also in ordinary people, can be considered serious.
His main conclusions created a new mini-revolution in leadership theory:
- Even if leaders had common character traits, this does not mean that they were the ones that defined leadership and that they were the ones that were used to achieve leadership goals. But if you identify the traits without which leadership is impossible, then you can identify potential leaders.
- “Leadership traits” must be appropriate to the situation. In other words, a leader in one situation may not be a leader in another.
To date, the theory has evolved to a clear list of traits that a leader possesses. The Inspirational Leadership training mentioned takes this list into account. But the list is not final, as research continues. At the moment, researchers are trying to understand such a trait as charisma - it is now considered one of the most important for a leader.
Ability to communicate goals
Another quality of a successful leader is the ability to project the goals set by top management and convey them to employees. The leader's task is to “energize” his team to achieve goals. This will not happen if the leader himself is not charged with a goal, a corporate idea.
A simple example: a sales plan. The manager, receiving a sales plan, simply transmits it to his subordinates; it is good if he distributes proportional parts of the general plan among employees.
The leader of the new formation sets himself more ambitious goals:
- He knows how to analyze the received plan and understand what tools can be used to achieve more.
- He looks far ahead, and not just at the next month - he knows how to think strategically in achieving goals for a long period (one to five years).
Leadership Qualities Test: How to Determine Whether You Are a Leader or Not
If by this part of the article you have formed the opinion that you already have the qualities necessary to lead and lead to victories, congratulations.
However, scientists believe that people, for objective reasons, create and maintain a positive image of themselves and idealize their qualities and skills. That is why there are a lot of tests to determine leadership qualities.
For example, participants in the Leaders of Russia competition undergo cognitive, logical, verbal and numerical tests. Large foreign companies necessarily test applicants. Questions are developed and later interpreted by experts. This is necessary to determine not only the social portrait and level of motivation, but also the strengths/weaknesses of a person.
Want to test yourself?
Take a diagnostic of leadership abilities using the methods of Zharikov and Krushelnitsky. Or the Jack Welch test. What both approaches have in common is the need to choose the statement that suits you.
I advise you not to focus on test results. If you notice that your opinion is being sought more often at work, that you are being invited to discuss global and strategically important issues, that issues are being delegated, and that your contribution is being adequately assessed, this is the beginning of the journey. Upgrade your skills, learn.
People are more important than processes
A properly built system will help avoid personalization errors and human factors. This is successfully confirmed by corporations and networks that operate without failures, thanks to well-established business processes. But for a leader, people remain a priority. A successful leader relies on a team rather than on a structured system in which each employee is just a transmission wheel in a huge mechanism. With the growing pace of work and staff rotation, you should not miss out on simple human relationships.
A successful leader not only keeps things moving in the right direction, he gives impetus to his team and helps direct their efforts. He is like a coach - he is always close to his team and is a mentor.
Control
Control is one of the main tasks of a leader. Control is usually carried out in two directions: “find and neutralize” or “understand and help.” A successful leader not only controls the work of his employees, but gradually comes to mutual trust, makes it clear that any questions are discussed, that he is ready to look for answers together. He trusts without missing checkpoints.
A successful leader is not only respected, he must be adored by his team. And here again the emotional component mentioned above comes into play, when employees want to be like the leader, then he becomes a successful leader.
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How to develop leadership skills and create an effective system for working with a team? Find out at the training from experts at the Russian School of Management! Learn more about the program and available formats. Stepan Dobrodumov Author of the media portal of the Russian School of Management
Types of Leaders
If you are familiar with the classification of types by Edward de Bona or Scott Shane, then you know that each of them had their own approach to defining leadership. Edward de Bonnet is a psychologist and believed that there are about 14 types - from organizers to leaders. Scott Shane, who was awarded a global award for his contributions to entrepreneurship research, offered a different version to the public. In his understanding, there are 8 types of leaders - from the leader to the seducer.
I am closer to the typology, which defines two types:
- Functional leader. Focused on goals and objectives. He is driven by the desire to implement the plan together with his team and achieve success.
- Affective leader. Everyone loves him, he knows how to establish communications within the team and beyond. But all his time is occupied by relationships with others, especially with members of his group.
Each person decides for himself which type he belongs to. If we are talking about leaders among managers, remember that success is a shared achievement. Your company achieves results through the contributions of every team member. Take the time to increase employee engagement, make them your allies, bearers of the company's DNA. When you have a good product or service, a great strategy, and a strong team, success will come even if you haven't achieved professional zen as a leader.
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