Since you were in elementary school, you’ve had opportunities to lead or influence other people. You don’t need a position or a title to lead others. Instead, leadership is a way of supporting others with a particular set of skills. You might think of leadership as guiding someone, taking the initiative to get something started or finished, or heading up a project or plan. You will need at least rudimentary leadership skills to perform any job in your career.
There are 15 areas of leadership that every leader can work to improve. To be a great leader, you don’t need to be the best at every one of these traits. The hope is that you have these skills in your arsenal, ready to use when you need to take the lead.
The leadership traits fall into one of these 15 areas:
- Integrity
- Emotional Intelligence
- Collaboration
- Inspirational
- Persistence
- Managing Conflict
- Coaching Others to Success
- Building Great Leaders
- Communication
- Results & Growth Orientation
- Agility
- Strategic Thinking & Planning
- Problem-Solving
- Business Acumen
- Organizational Strategy & Design
You must specify and deepen many elements within these traits for continuous growth. For example, a first-time leader should be able to communicate the company’s mission or strategy to keep their team aligned and meet a deadline. However, for an executive leader, communication is even more critical and in-depth. An excellent executive leader will need to be able to write the strategy they develop and communicate a consistent but individualized message to people that work for them, customers, or shareholders.
There are four levels of leadership, and each of the 15 leadership traits fit within them.
First-Line Leadership – Most people will, at some point, lead a project or group of people toward a goal, and this is what CareerTruth refers to as First-Line Leadership. First-Line leadership may not require that you have a manager or leader title or even direct reports. However, you influence others toward an outcome you’ve identified in a project or assignment. Spending time getting to know yourself and your effect on others is most important at this stage of leadership. The leadership traits to focus on are Integrity, Emotional Intelligence, Collaboration, Persistence, and Communication.
Management – When you lead a team or a portion of your company, you’ve begun to manage others. Leadership as a manager is vital because it significantly impacts the First-Line Leaders and other individual contributors. People leave organizations because of bad leaders from the First-Line and Management levels. So while deepening the First-Line traits above, a Management leader is accountable for deploying the strategic plan and resources allocated by a more senior executive leader. At this point of leadership, you should focus on Coaching Others to Success, Managing Conflict in Teams, Focusing on Results, Having a Growth Mindset, and having Agility to Deal with Change.
Strategic Leadership – In this phase of leadership, you will find yourself leading a large division or the whole company. Senior leaders are responsible for developing, deploying, and driving execution. You’ll need to retain all the traits of First Line and Managers – specifically to understand how to get other people in their teams to execute to plan appropriately. Additionally, you’ll need to add more critical thinking regarding problem-solving inside and outside the company, Strategic Thinking, Planning to Create Desired Results, Excellent Executive Communication Skills, and Business Acumen tied to Creating Sustainability in Decision Making.
Transformational Leadership – If you lead a whole company and impact your industry, you’ve found yourself in the position of Transformational leadership. Leaders who genuinely transform a company or even an industry must continue to show Integrity, Collaboration, and Persistence for all to witness at the highest level. They must be highly collaborative, create good out of conflict, inspire others to persist through difficulties that meet an aspirational vision of success, coach and build other great leaders, and continuously problem-solve while being humble & agile when considering the organizational changes required to complete the strategic plan.
A leader must always be humble and willing to learn to meet the needs of others. Servant leadership means you do not lead to your ends but for the good of those you lead and the good of the organization.
Whether you want to make more money or are driven by your purpose to impact people, leadership development is the most important accelerant to your career success. Be humble to your limits. Be bold to be better.